


The Second Game

by isshi69nikkei



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, First Time, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Mystery, One-Sided Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Past Abuse, Post-His Last Vow, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:58:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 174,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isshi69nikkei/pseuds/isshi69nikkei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a translation of a long fanfic - the 'slow build' tag is the most relevant of all;) The action takes place directly after events of third season - Sherlock goes back to London to find out who and why put Moriarty's face on all the screens in England... but things he discovers are definitely not what he has expected.<br/>Mostly slow-build Sheriarty with bits of one-sided Johnlock.<br/>The translation was on hiatus for two years (sorry...!) but now I'm back ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Miss me?

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Druga gra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2434478) by [isshi69nikkei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isshi69nikkei/pseuds/isshi69nikkei). 



> Chapters 1-8 was translated by Prophet while 9-? are mine ;) If you see any terrible mistakes, do not hesitate to correct me, I won’t take offense - I know my English isn't the best.  
> The original story has 33 chapters (and it's finished!:)) but some of them were so long that I decided to split them; I suppose English version will have about 50-60 chapters. 
> 
> EDIT 2017-05-06 Many thanks to ImpishDesign who helps me with correction and grammar errors :*

***

Miss me? Miss me? Miss me?

 

The looped words that put Secret Service on high alert and made the whole Great Britain panic only few hours ago, still sounded in Sherlock’s head like an annoying theme from an advertisement or a broken record. He was watching a short movie which had been showed on all these screens time after time trying to find something that would give him a clue: mismatched frame, movement, something, _anything_. Unfortunately, the animation was monotonous and - except for the obvious fact that someone was able to break the security systems and take over the television network and also electronic billboards all over the country - there was absolutely nothing special or untypical in it.

There was a moment when thoughts about a magical code that could opened every lock returned to his head but he considered that it was ridiculous from the start – if it existed this whole thing wouldn’t look like this and it wouldn’t end up after three minutes and forty-one seconds of  primitive image which disappeared as suddenly as it showed up. It would be something like thunder, Moriarty or his wannabe (that was also possible) would appear after this show one way or another, and there should be an attack or maybe a spectacle, final proof that he, the consulting criminal, had actually risen from the dead. His London rats would have gone crazy instead of staying quiet and minor offenders would have started their criminal dance.

At first Sherlock expected a repeat of the events that took place before his fake suicide but in the end he lost any hope for something so… _predictable_. It would be illogical to expect that Moriarty would show his power again by opening the locks that were seemingly impossible to unlock but the silence seemed even more strange. On the other hand – he did it, _he showed off_ by taking control of all monitors in the country for almost four minutes _. He showed off and disappeared_. And so there was the most important question: why would anyone do something like this?

Less than four minutes. Exactly two hundred twenty one seconds. _Touché_.

He took his cell phone which was stubbornly quiet, not counting irrelevant  messages from Mycroft – asking if he had any idea what happened and what he was going to do – and John who was worried if everything was ok. Angrily, he threw the phone back on the table and started watching Moriarty’s movie once again. Gritting his teeth, he tried to find anything useful in the chaos reigning in his mind palace. When he was looking at the screen, his vision was  stabilizing and new ideas and possibilities were showing off… and when he was turning the clip off, all these things and his attention were going to hell. And because of that, he had to turn the ‘repeat’ button time after time.

Letting his emotions take control of him and his focus…? That was unacceptable.

Over the past few weeks when he had been solving Magnussen’s case, taking drugs, rehabilitating after being shot and finally spending some days in prison, waiting for judicial decision, his ability to make deductions deteriorated. His mental and physical condition wasn’t the best, he felt distracted and no matter how hard he tried to focus – it didn’t do him any good. Maybe it was the matter of fact that he didn’t have much material to analyse but... every time he turned the player off, his head was full of everything that happened lately _again_ : John’s marriage and how it made their relationship less close, finding out about Mary’s lies... the moment when he got familiar with Magnussen’s tactics – searching for people’s pressure points and using them for his own purpose. A moment when he realized how and _how easily_ this man could put pressure on him in an effective way - John, Irene Adler, Moriarty… Redbeard. The hound of Baskerville. And the moment he found out what John’s and his _Wife’s From Hell_ pressure points were. Sherlock snorted with irritation, thinking about all these embarrassing sentiments that made him shoot Magnussen down in front of dozens of policemen and his own brother. That time he thought it was the only solution and the only kind of heroism he could afford but now – after few days and nights – he saw it a little bit differently. There weren’t any regrets and, for sure, he didn’t feel guilty  because the world was a better place since that slimy monster had died; however, for his own mental health, he tried not to focus on that burning feeling that he made so many mistakes that day, from the moment of leaving Christmas dinner to shooting Magnussen. Or even earlier, when he was just planning but it all went wrong since Mycroft’s great mind wasn’t supporting him like it did during _Lazarus_.

The TV with information canal broadcasting was silent but after a while Sherlock turned it off and closed two of three laptops, leaving only this one on which he was watching the already famous animation. He pushed  _play_ and closed his eyes, listening to repeated words, generated with speech synthesizer. When he heard those, he could forget about a disappointment with himself and simply go back to the time when he was running with John around London without any emotional commitment, hunting criminals, looking for Moriarty or just having a good time. Or even before, when boredom was his worst enemy, after that – Mycroft and after him: the whole stupidity of the world; when he didn’t care about feelings and they weren’t any threat to him.

Miss me?

Yes, he did. Maybe he didn’t miss Moriarty as a person – it would be some kind of deviation – but he missed those times when things weren’t simple, but they were logical and interesting at least. When _the adventures_ meant races and shootings, not preparing a speech for friend’s wedding; the wedding which wasn’t supposed to change anything and yet changed everything. He missed the times when his relationship with John was based on solving riddles and living together, not like now – rare conversations, dramas involving Mary and short text messages about a suburb house loan or choosing a wallpaper. Did it matter anything that he bought the same one as they had in the living room on Baker Street? Sherlock didn’t suppose he would ever visit them to see it.

He sighed and opened his eyes, looking at Moriarty’s motionless face for a while – the clip ended and stopped on the last frame. _Miss me?_ The answer was so obvious. When everything important to him was gradually falling apart, cases became insipid and less absorbing, when John left with Mary and became an exemplary civilian, the drugs stopped being fun and Janine, who was the most interesting person he lately met, didn’t speak to him – he missed those times even more and in this case _‘those times’_ meant one, particular person.

The forum on his website thanks to which he had been able to contact Moriarty before the meeting at the swimming pool – when he had been playing with him in hide and seek, while John and Lestrade were oh, so outraged – was lying fallow and he really doubted that anyone visited it except for the stupid fans enchanted with his hunting hat. There was only one thing he still had after the game with that twisted psycho: his old phone number, that Sherlock had never forgotten. Unfortunately, it was almost impossible that Moriarty was still using it. For a start he should consider the less probable option – somehow Moriarty survived and this whole show was just a trick. His or one of his supporter, some sick fanatic or, God forbid!, Mycroft’s who would be able to do such thing just to save Sherlock from a suicidal mission. According to his estimating there was a 20% of chances that his text message would be received by _anyone_ and less than 1% that Moriarty himself would get it. But there wasn’t any reason not to try.

He took his phone and for a few minutes twiddled with it, gliding with fingertips on the screen. His mobile was rather new but ordinary – a perfect smart phone for someone who didn’t care neither about technical innovation nor colourful gadgets, but also didn’t mind buying new equipment if it seemed to be useful. Of course, not like this hideous pink property of Jennifer Wilson or Irene’s custom-made knick-knack. Each of them (well, first one was a duplicate made by Moriarty) were closed in his desk as the souvenirs. He turned his eyes towards this desk and froze for a moment, somehow reminding himself the text flirts with The Woman. Well, it was called a flirt by John, whose phone, by the way, he should steal at the first opportunity and make it a part of his collection too. The right corner of his lips raised slightly and after a while his fingers danced across the  screen:

 _Yes._ A short look at the face on the monitor. _How about a cup of tea?_

 

***

 

Before he experienced Magnussen’s pressure points method on himself, he didn’t think much about it. He usually knew where to hit to hurt someone the most but he wasn’t doing that to make anyone suffer but to solve a case and did it rather automatically than wilfully. Some of the people he knew would think differently for sure but nevertheless, it didn’t make him a sociopathic scum. And, before Magnussen used that tactic against him, he hadn’t really realised the power of manipulation and blackmail.

When he woke up next morning – one look on his phone, no answer from Moriarty’s number but also no report about not delivering the message – he started thinking about his own pressure points again. He had too many of them and some of them… he hadn’t even seen as a pressure point until Magnussen mentioned them; a Redbeard, for example. That made Sherlock realise how _sensitive_ he became. There were just so many potential risks when he was emotionally attached to things that could become tools of blackmail or causing trauma, if used properly. He wasn’t always like that but lately he became soft, even more than most of the ordinary people. They usually had one, maximum two pressure points – their kids, a secret, little junkie brother, a spouse’s past. Sherlock had a whole palette of them and those were only things which was mentioned by Magnussen and which Sherlock was aware of.  He didn’t even want to think how many of them were hidden deep inside his heart, buried and forgotten at the bottom of his mind palace.

Straight from his bedroom he went to the living room where he took a tea prepared by Mrs Hudson and, drinking it slowly, he started web research reading blogs, forums and information portals. Although Sherlock spent this way almost three hours, he looked through only few conspiracy theories invented by Internet society. There wasn’t anything serious but those cases made his morning much more entertaining because, despite of being really annoying in real life, primitive minds were so amusing when they tried to _think._ Some of the ideas you could find even worthy of considering but they weren’t something that he wouldn’t have already come up with. But netizens were excused by the fact that social media never said anything about verified details of a Moriarty’s death – actual or fake. So those poor people went back to their ridiculous theories from 2-3 years ago: Darren Brown, masks, romantic conspiracy between two consultants - detective and criminal, secret participation of Molly Hooper and few more, less popular. From the newest theories, the most fascinating was a 2-page essay proving that Moriarty is John Watson and he showed his fake face as a Richard Brook to cause confusion before his planned attack in Dublin. An appearance of ‘seemingly’ extinct passenger pigeons over the capital was supposed to be a proof of that. When Sherlock finally read information binding those two issues he was so shocked that he had to save this absurdity on his computer.

When he got tired of following those crazy ideas, he changed into ordinary clothes, nothing conspicuous, so no coat with the stand-up collar, crimson shirt or, God forbid!, the hunting hat, and left his flat on Baker Street by jumping out of the window from John’s old bedroom. The crowd of reporters made leaving his apartment without being seen impossible so he had to jump on roofs and lanes for a while before he left the area full of paparazzi. Sherlock didn’t even hope he could somehow follow Moriarty or someone responsible for yesterday’s show using the homeless network but he had to try, without using his phone at all. For somebody with such hack skills intercepting information or hunting Sherlock’s people wouldn’t be a problem and he didn’t want to expose anyone to danger. Ok, if there was someone who can  hack every system, the cameras of CCTV wouldn’t be difficult as well but... he wasn’t about to make anything easier or simply show his intentions as if it was nothing to hide. Sherlock met with few people and asked them to send some questions to anyone they were able to get in touch with. His people were supposed to search for anything unusual, particularly _the big rat_ , Moran – the man got out of a prison in suspicious way and Sherlock gave him up long time ago so he didn’t know any details – and also Moriarty/Brook himself, even if, spoken loudly, it sounded ridiculous.

After sending all messages, he visited Bill Wiggins in his dingy cubicle on an attic of old tenement house, somewhere in the downtown. His quarters could be called a hole although this definition suited a basement more than an attic. The bathroom looked like it was taken from a horror movie and there wasn’t any doors, however half-open kitchen looked better than a combination of laboratory and garbage which Sherlock had on Baker Street.  A young man walked around his flat a little bit unsteadily, trying to clean up his coffee table in the cluttered living room and preparing a tea. He put a bowl with snacks and tray full of red apples in front of Sherlock but detective didn’t even look at any of this. He was only waiting patiently until his tea in a chipped kettle was brewed.

“So what’s up, Shezza? That Christmas thing didn’t go too well, did it?” he finally said, falling on a  dilapidated chair opposite to Sherlock.

“What do you actually know?”

“Magnussen’s dead, they said on the news” he turned his head and put up the hood of his sweatshirt on. “I didn’t believe in this story of shooting by the burglars even for a minute.”

“If you did, I would think you were retarded.”

“So... it didn’t go like you planned. I’m only surprised that you were gone for a couple of days and the doctor is still walking free like nothing happened” he said and Sherlock frowned.

“What makes you think that John killed him?” detective asked coldly and Bill rolled his eyes and  looked at his wrist, dislocated few months ago.

“He has some blow. And he’s a soldier. I can easily imagine that man killing someone just because things aren’t like they were supposed to be.”

“John didn’t have a clue what I was about to do back then. I shot Magnussen when a high treason and selling state secrets were an alternative.”

“What about the treasury?”

“It existed only in his head. Now it’s gone forever.”

“Pity.” Bill sighed and Sherlock looked piercingly at him. “It’s like with Irene Adler’s phone. Nobody knew what would be worse: disclosure of information or destroying it until you found out what exactly was in it”

“In Magnussen’s head there was nothing I would like to use in any way” he growled and gritted his teeth, remembering the man who disgusted him so much.

“Really? So you don’t want to know what are your enemies pressure points? I’m sure you weren’t Mycroft’s only one. And Moriarty? Imagine this! Pressure point of the consulting criminal!”

“I really don’t think Moriarty had any.”

“Moriarty can _still_ have them” Bill laughed and took a kettle, swung it for a while and put back on a table. “I’d bet all my money that he is still alive.”

“How much it would be? Ten pounds?” Sherlock snorted while Bill chuckled foolishly.

“It’s not that bad. Well, Shezza, how much would you bet that Moriarty is alive, sitting somewhere in London, taking his next steps?”

“Not a penny. It would be a game of negative result.”

“We’re chemists, not mathematicians, my friend” Bill said with a wide smile on his face. “But if you are so stubborn with your probability calculus... How much? That he didn’t shoot himself in his head, that he ran away and disappeared?”

“Two percent” Sherlock answered thoughtlessly. “And five for the fact it wasn’t real Moriarty. Ignoring all conspiracy theories.”

“Did you read this one about Moriarty being the doctor?” he asked pointing out his laptop which was connected to a huge TV that looked way too expensive to be taken from legal source.

“I wish I didn’t tell you all these things” Sherlock mumbled and meaningfully looked at the kettle, realizing that one more minute and tea will be overbrewed and good for nothing. Bill laughed and, as if he did this to tease Sherlock, he reached the table but then pulled back and started moving the cups. As he saw detective’s killing look, he finally filled them with tea, adding milk and spilling a little bit on the table.

“Who else would listen to your twisted stories since you don’t have neither John nor Janine anymore?”

“The skull” he snapped which made Bill snort slightly.

“You can’t talk into space. The doctor broke you. Now you need _real_ listeners.”

“Few more comments like this and you will replace my friend on the grate” Sherlock said coldly.

Bill smiled and took one of the apples. He started cutting them into half-moons, looking up at Sherlock from time to time. The detective stayed silent, drinking his too milky and too strong tea, staring nowhere. John made better tea. Comparing to Mrs Hudson’s tea, this one deserved only to be flushed in the toilet.

“So...” Bill said after two minutes „You went to Appledore, talked to Magnussen and it turned out to be no treasury, he didn’t want to cooperate and moreover he intended to hand you over to the police as spies and traitors. You shot his head off, police and Mycroft came… and now you are here. This is all I know or guessed. Am I missing something?”

“I had no idea that Mycroft had been waiting for an opportunity to get this guy for years while Mycroft had no idea I was going to kill Magnussen.”

“What did he do to make you shoot him? Because I don’t believe you simply...”

“It’s not your business. He hit my _pressure point_. That’s all you’re going to hear from me.”

“He was teasing the doctor” Bill said, weirdly satisfied and when he saw confirming irritation on Sherlock’s face, he gave him a broad smile.

“My parents’ house. What happened in there?” detective asked, didn’t even bothering to ask to change the subject. “I know Mycroft’s story. I need the real one.”

“He woke up faster than he should. I suppose he properly dosed his punch.” Bill answered completely bored „His men came, beat the hell out of me and left. Whole story. Oh, before he left, Mycroft had said that he could accuse me of high treason at any time because he had evidence. So I said he wouldn’t do this because thus he would have to accuse his little brother in the first place. Now it’s a whole story.”

“Was he very mad?” _I hope he was furious._ He thought.

“In fact... no, he wasn’t angry at all” Bill shrugged and ate a piece of apple. „Wanna some?”

“And Mary?”

“What about Mary?”

“How did she react when she woke up?”

“Your doctor didn’t tell you?” Bill was honestly surprised. Sherlock gave him angry look but decided to answer and not to lie.

“We didn’t talk much since that time” he mumbled, staring at his cup and squeezing it a little bit too much.

“I see” Bill said without any spite nor interest. Sherlock frowned and, maybe contrary to himself, he kept talking like he was about to convince himself he wasn’t hurt.

“I was taken to prison. He came by for five minutes and we talked through a window with Mycroft and dozens of policemen staying close to us. After that we saw each other just yesterday when I was going to leave England and...”

“I really get it” he rolled his eyes “And, after few minutes, you landed back because Moriarty bla bla bla” Bill said with his know-all, bored tone. The same one, Sherlock used when he was the same age as Bill now. It was hard to tell if he was just showing off, trying to impress his idol or if it was simply natural for him. “And again you two didn’t talk because there was more important thing to take care of: your nemesis, resurrecting in an even better way than you did. And after that you left to collect your thoughts and start an investigation. And Mary...” he swallowed a piece apple and put a handful of nuts into his mouth. “She almost beat me up. Mommy had to calm her down because she was about to bite my throat. Hot chick. You know, it’s hard to believe she’s just your doctor’s secretary-nurse. I’m almost 100% sure that she had been doing something way more spectacular before she came to London.”

Sherlock clenched his lips and looked away but Bill, despite of his impressive (for an ordinary man) deduction skills, didn’t notice that the detective became more nervous when he mentioned Mary’s past. He could doubt this woman and have mixed feelings about her but he wasn’t intending to expose her by telling anyone about her past, even the most trusted person. It was enough that Mycroft started to dig and it was more than possible that he knew something… and Mrs Hudson heard way too much as well.

“Won’t you ask about your parents?”

“I don’t care” Sherlock shrugged and finished the tea. “You’ve told me all I wanted to know.”

“So you came here just to find out what the doctor’s wife did when she woke up after we had drugged her?”

“More or less.” He stood up faster than he should and his chair creaked loudly against such treatment, drowning the sound of his phone out. Sherlock got a message but ignored it and walked to the window to observe the street. “And I wanted to know was your opinion about Moriarty’s thing but you told me already. Any other ideas? Others than that absurdity online?”

“I think it’s him and I’d bet...”

“Oh, come on! You can’t have only _one_ idea!” snapped Sherlock, suddenly realizing he sounded colder than he intended to. He cursed himself in his head. Short talk about John and Mary and he was mentally deficient.

“Any other idea would be ridiculous. You just said it! Once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true .”

“You’re awfully easily deleting if resurrection of Moriarty is your last remaining option.”

“It’s _the best one_.”     

“I saw him shooting his head off. I saw pieces of brain and skull in a pool of blood in which, by the way, his body lied. _Dead_ body.”

“John saw how you were lying on the street after you had jumped from the roof.”

“John is John and I am me. I assure you that he can be deceived much easier. However...” he turned back and smiled devilishly. “Moriarty’s return would be the most interesting option of them all.”

“New Year’s wish?” Bill asked.

“If I believed in such crap, this is exactly what I’d wish for.”

 

***

 

Another two days, until New Year’s Eve night, Sherlock spent outside, avoiding reporters, cameras and Mycroft with his insistent and irritating questions if he already found anything. His genius brother was probably pressed by other government éminence grise, who wanted _results_. They didn’t kill him nor take him to a prison, so they had a moral right to expect something – well, that’s what Mycroft was telling him in the text messages which Sherlock ignored. He answered his brother only once by writing „I’m on a case, stop disturbing me”. That reduced amount of messages a little and made them nicer but it was still far from perfection. Finally he turned off the sounds of calls and messages from Mycroft thanks to what it didn’t distract him anymore. And besides… it made him spitefully satisfied.

Sherlock was _watching_ , meeting with different people, some more suspicious than others, some who had far but still _some_ connection to Moriarty’s web. Not too close to kill them right away but also not so far to delete them from his memory. Because Moriarty’s animation show was just one-off and there was no such demonstration after that, people started to think it was just hack attack of some bored kid from continent or some organisation or Russian intelligence. Even Sherlock himself doubted more and more that Moriarty could return but still, if there were some tracks, he wasn’t sure and kept digging.

Nothing came from that. When he came back home the last day of the year it was late afternoon and he was so exhausted and frustrated that he started to look at Mycroft’s reports made by police and intelligence. To sum up: they had no idea who, from where or how caused the attack. They only had some clue about the way and tools used. It wasn’t helpful at all because his knowledge about hacking the systems wasn’t enough for this case, so information on which tool someone used didn’t make any difference for him. As the matter of fact, even what they found was so discrepant and useless that he could use those materials to set fire in his grate. Which he actually did. He put his chair closer to fire, sat and turned on YouTube on his laptop to watch some clips recorded on cell phones. They all showed cities covered by moving billboards with Moriarty’s face. On the clips he heard passers screaming, traffic and a little bit overdue Christmas carols. He was watching some of mixed clips when his phone made a sound. He didn’t even bother to stop short movie, it was just message from John that New Year’s Eve party is on and he reminded Sherlock should clean up his flat before he, Mary, Molly and Lestrade arrive. And they will come at 9 at the latest. He read it with one eye.

Sherlock didn’t remember inviting anyone for this night (he actually doubted it) or even talking with John about it, but those were information that he deleted from his Mind Palace very quickly. But when he was about to answer the doctor, something else got his attention. Sherlock rewound a clip few seconds back to see a beautiful house, surrounded by trees and plain areas with dry heather. In the foreground there was well preserved access road, next to which he could see some information boards which ruined the view. And were rather invalid. But all of these were electronic showed Moriarty’s face, which could get attention of all potential viewers. Sherlock had a feeling that something’s wrong so he downloaded the clip and watched it all over again, searching for something that didn’t match but the only suspicious thing was that one he saw before. He couldn’t turn his look away but also understood even less.

There was no chance that some psychedelic fan could make this video, all in all – what would the point? And who actually could... Sherlock shook his head and paused the clip, looking at the view like from landscape and Moriarty’s face over and over again. Although he was almost sure, he checked archive weather forecast on 3 different websites – all were consistent. Over 7 days ago was the last time when it was snowing in England and looking at this clip, place where could be heather – at the beginning of December, it was snowing for 2 hours and then snow turned into annoying drizzle.

And this snow, too weak to melt, wet and fine was on the clip, during two seconds part.

New conclusions filled Sherlock’s mind with the speed of light. He excluded the possibility that that movie could be recorded in actual time even abroad because screens with Moriarty were shown only in England. The only way left was to record it before or after his ‘death’. If someone did it later, abroad was the only option – again not snowing for a long time – and this would be worth digging deeper if first version was a blind alley. However, if it was made earlier, the whole thing should be prepared by a perpetrator of attack because no one could know about the animation or what it will be used for. So if an author caused himself so much trouble with it, it had to be some point... And putting this online had to be very important to him.

If it was someone who wasn’t connected to Moriarty, nothing like this would be done. However Moriarty himself or finally - unfortunately – his men or some moronic wannabe... they could ask Sherlock to dance one more time, giving him a clue this way and waiting for him to solve another riddle. Detective stifled a laugh and immediately went into action as he felt that his hands are shaking of excitement.

The movie was uploaded few hours ago by some youtuber who was a specialist of connecting video parts and turning them into mixed clips of different information, virals and news. He was online almost all the time, even on New Year’s Eve. Sherlock sent him a message and he responded few minutes later – he had created that clip using his favourite videos with Moriarty, showed on monitors and yes, he had the sources written down. No, he doesn’t remember that part with lovely, village house because he was connecting only videos recorded by people in cities, arcades or electronic shops... And no, about these two seconds – he didn’t have a clue why it had appeared in his video. Sherlock thanked him and this time shouted of joy. Suddenly he jumped off his chair and, still holding his laptop, rotated on his own axis and then went to his desk. Sherlock dropped everything that laid on it on the floor and next he started to put all his computers, one beside one. Because they were in different corners of his flat he had some problems with finding them. That meant Mrs Hudson cleaned his place again. Looking for his equipment he made quite a mess but he didn’t care.

He was checking few videos at the same time and after a quarter he found two more that included the village house but in different presentations – the first one didn’t last even two seconds but the second was longer than five. None of the authors knew how this part got into their clips and they both stated they hadn’t seen it before. Each of them was an ordinary person, who creates such crap in their free time (checked on social portals, schools, workplaces, photos of childhood, regular activity on a board, virtual farm active for couple of years and almost 100 of ‘friends’ but connected with each other in a logical way). What’s more, that kid who created the clip with over five seconds part was more than willing to help and he sent Sherlock the original version of his video, thank to what the detective was sure that someone hacked those animations. He was ready for the next step of his research.

Heather, plain, snow. Not much, especially since he had to take recording outside the country into consideration. Sherlock started searching for a clue on news boards because they were fake for sure - advertisement of non-existent companies, imaginary names of places, addresses, names, phone numbers... it was a way to nowhere. He decoded dialling codes in few minutes but it didn’t help at all.  The casual places, not connected with each other in any way. The detective analysed all the words in addresses, looking for some code. He put them in many different ways but this all made him even more frustrated... still this frustration was nice and motivating, even if “pleasant frustration” was surely an oxymoron. He tried to connect his thoughts in mind palace but he reached out only blank space. After a quarter he gave up, deciding that if he didn’t find a code for such a long time – it simply wasn’t there.

The excitation made his heart beat faster, and his breathing more shallow. He stood up and walked around his room several times, catching random things and putting them back on the floor or the table. He needed an impulse, a spark that would strike the genius out of him… and suddenly he knew what it was. He circled the table and, grinning like crazy, kneed on the floor, crawled to a closet and took some woody blocks placed under it. Blindly he reached the last one, emergency locker  for cigarettes that even Mycroft didn’t know about, and took one packet. As he opened it, the man smelled the tobacco with rapt attention, feeling this particular delight. A moment later a cigarette was between his lips and as he lighted it and inhaled, he moaned with relief and satisfaction. Slowly, he came back to his desk, brushing away an ash to a flowerpot with a withered orchid – a gift from a fan or some grateful client – and started staring at the most important part of the five-seconds clip.

Once again, Sherlock was looking for the areas where heather grew, where it was snowing this season, even only once. Surprisingly, there weren’t many places like that and even fewer were it was snowing at early evenings (according to the colour of the sky, the video was recorded somewhere between five and seven pm) so the number of potential places decreased even more. He completed the list and focused on the kinds of heather and trees surrounding the house, then – the wind direction (he had to check archive of the weather forecast again). When he ruled out all the places that didn’t match, only one location left.

But before the name “SUSSEX DOWNS” sounded in his head like a triumphant symphony, the whole effect was crashed into pieces by annoying ringing of doorbell, then steps, laughing and finally knocking.

“Sherlock! The first guests have come!” Mrs Hudson said with wide smile on her face. And suddenly she got saddened when she saw how the living room looked like. “Dear boy, clean up this mess and for God’s sake, air this flat before everyone comes!” she turned back, caught Mary who was standing behind her and took the other woman to her apartment.

Sherlock didn’t look at the door but he knew perfectly well that only two women left, what meant he was in his room only with John, who must have come here with Mary. Pretending he was alone, the detective smoked a cigarette demonstratively. John cleared his throat and only that made Sherlock raise his head and look at the doctor.

“I texted to remind you of the party” he said trying to be patient. He bowed to pick up a sheet of Mycroft’s half burned report and threw it to a fireplace with a disgust. Some time ago a draft must have blown away some pieces of burned paper and now they were floating over the room. Sherlock didn’t care about it before because he was busy with solving the case, however when he saw it right now, he had to admit: the room looked horrible. “And you...” John said but frowned looking at the laptops on Sherlock’s desk and peeked at the screens over his shoulder. “What is this?”

“A case” Sherlock answered blowing the smoke into his face. John looked at him like he was about to kill the detective and the next thing he did was squeezing his wrist. The cigarette was taken from Sherlock and thrown to the grate. “Hey!”

“You won’t be smoking when my pregnant wife is in your flat. Now get dressed and... put yourself together. Molly and Lestrade will be here in any minute and you...” John looked at him up and down. „You are sitting in front of a computer, watching YouTube videos, _smoking_ , and wearing a bathrobe.”

“It’s a _case_.” Sherlock repeated angrily. _Sussex Downs_. This was the only thing that was important to him at that time. He was about to connect the clues when his thoughts were distracted so he had reason to be irritated. “I was close to solving it when you all suddenly _had to_ come and ruin this all.”

“You invited us.”

“I don’t remember inviting anyone.”

“Well, it doesn’t surprise me” John snorted with irritation. “Besides...” he frowned for a second forgetting what he wanted to say. “... why didn’t you tell me that you have another case?”

“It was too obvious” Sherlock said looking at him with a pity; what else he could do in such a situation? “Besides you wouldn’t be any help.” He closed his laptop with the weather forecasts and covered it with his hands.

“It didn’t go too well last time when you worked alone” John pointed out sarcastically; it wasn’t easy for Sherlock to hide the fact that John’s words hurt his ego, maybe because they were so true.

“It went perfectly” he said after few seconds. “Magnussen’s dead and I have Moriarty’s case opened once again.” He clapped his hands and smiled in creepy, totally insincere way. “Take care of your _pregnant wife_ if such a case is too much for you.” Sherlock took the laptop from the desk and rose from his chair. “If you want to party while Moriarty is hiding somewhere in London – _fine_. I won’t be in your way.”

“Sherlock!” John yelled and grabbed his hand. “I know those last actions made you a little bit... confused. Don’t deny! I’m sure you have many things to do but, for Christ’s sake, it’s New Year’s Eve.  You need to relax so please, go change and act like a normal person. You will feel better. Hm?” he bent his head looking at Sherlock so intensively that the detective couldn’t simply say no to him.

“Fine” he muttered and pulled out of his squeeze to go to the bedroom.

“Sherlock...” doctor hemmed and pointed a laptop that Sherlock was still holding.

“What?”

“Give me that and get dressed. The others will come here in any minute and I know you enough to...” seeing that Sherlock didn’t do anything, he took his laptop away. “Give me that! I know you. If I won’t take it from you, you’re going to lock yourself in the bedroom and won’t get out till morning.”

“ _Fine!_ ” Sherlock repeated, more expressly and nervously and went to the other room. When he closed the door, he put his hand into the pocket of his bathrobe. He cursed in his head, realizing that there is no cell phone nor cigarettes. Sherlock looked around searching for something electronic which would let him find anything connected with Sussex Downs. There wasn’t anything like this in that room so, gritting his teeth, he opened his closet and took clean suit out.

While he was getting dressed he tried to find in his Mind Palace anything of that conclusion he had in his head just a moment ago. He couldn’t catch it. His skills failed and why? Because John showed up, talking about his child and wife, lecturing, touching him and acting like nothing had changed between them.

All in all, sometimes Mrs Hudson was right. _Sometimes._

 

***


	2. New Year Party

***

Allowed amount of people that Sherlock accepted in his apartment went far beyond his limits and it made the evening a nightmare. Lestrade came with Donovan -which was -ridiculous, Molly on the other hand, brought a guy who she had been dating for a few days. Sherlock looked him up and down disdainfully but said nothing since John started sending him warning glances. Even though the man didn’t have curly, dark hair and a woollen scarf tied around his neck, he had angular face and bony hands just like the previous one… what-was-his-name? And he was wearing purple shirt and suit pants. Sherlock didn’t bother remembering his name because he noticed that Molly didn’t care at all about this guy. She brought him because she didn’t want to be alone... and because he resembled Sherlock a bit. By the way, she was looking at the detective from under her fake eyelashes every time she grabbed this guy’s hand or when she let him kiss her on the cheek. It was obvious that he had crush on her and Sherlock quickly deduced he worked in Barts – as a doctor, for sure; they had known each other for a while and he wanted to ask her out the whole time but waited patiently for her to be single and get over after breaking off the engagement. The guy was serious about her, no suspicious past, earnings way beyond middle class, moved to the suburb in past few months. A kitten, probably taken from a shelter, one-year car E-class, holiday abroad – twice a year, recently visited his family – brother or cousin – somewhere in France. The society probably considered him as a good but rather dull match…which he actually was. Still, it was a bit sad that Molly didn’t care about him and Sherlock almost felt sorry for this guy when she looked at her crush with longing eyes, completely ignoring her actual date.

He liked Molly and he valued many of her qualities but he couldn’t get it why she was dating such a guy... or that one before him, what-was-his-name. It was as if _he_ was looking for a new roommate because of loneliness after John’s moving out but the roommate had to be short, blond, with post-traumatic stress disorder and clear symptoms of depression. It’s not like he _was_ lonely, of course. And even if he _was_... Bill was as different from John as he could be.

Sherlock snorted, angry at himself for these embarrassing weaknesses. He looked at his laptops, arranged by John. His phone was on the top of the computer tower and right now it was the most wanted company for him. There was no chance to get there without jumping over the table or elbowing behind Mrs Hudson’s back. He didn’t plan to do that right now, since he wasn’t in confrontational mood so his thoughts had to come back to _here and now_. Especially since Donovan, who was sitting next to him, asked him a question. Sherlock answered with a trite growl but when he saw Mary stroking her belly and looking at John with love in her eyes, he realized that the company of this annoying policewoman was the best he could get this evening.

“I’m sorry, Sally, can you repeat what you were saying? I got lost in my thoughts” he said with such a sweet and kind voice that she got flabbergasted in one second while Lestrade and Molly choked with wine at the same moment. Before she got her voice back, Heavens took pity on him and his phone started ringing like crazy, playing the national anthem which could announce only one person. Sherlock thanked all the gods he didn’t believe in that he muted all Mycroft’s private numbers and left only his _really-REALLY-private_ one. Someone quickly gave him his phone and Sherlock jumped off his place and, didn’t want to miss the opportunity, ran to the kitchen to pick up the phone. At first he wanted to reject the call and just talk to a silent cell however it was no point in doing so – his brother would call him again.

“What do you want?”

“Sherlock! How nice to _finally_ hear your voice, brother mine.”

“Are you calling to wish me all best for the New Year or just to ruin my mood? Don’t bother, the party sucks anyway.”

“Neither.” Mycroft said, not getting rid of his sarcastic tone even for a second. “How is your investigation going?”

“In progress” Sherlock said shortly. He didn’t want to share his partial conclusions with Mycroft... Especially since he still wasn’t sure who was behind the show which happened after Magnussen’s death.

“So maybe you would be interested in the fact that I’ve just got a disturbing message.”

“Get to the point, Mycroft. My guests are waiting.” he said which made Mycroft snorted with pity.

 _“Good lead, Mr Holmes_ ” he read with a cold voice. _”You can tell him that midnight is a deadline,_ three X’s” Mycroft finished and Sherlock almost saw his brother rolling his eyes right now. “If you deigned to answer my messages...”

“Did you identify the number?” he didn’t let him finish and Mycroft stopped talking for a second, outraged by such impudence.

“Private. After an identification attempt it turned out to be inactive bullshit. Someone is working on it.” he said with all dignity he had left after Sherlock’s last words.

“Spare it, it’s a wrong direction.”

“So which is the right one?” he asked insistently and Sherlock sighed, looking at the laughing crowd in his living room.

“Did you send it to me?”

“I assume you got the same message a while ago but since it was no response – he sent this to me.”

“It’s a little bit difficult to answer to a _private number.”_

“Don’t change the subject. _What is the right direction_?”

“Sussex Downs” Sherlock said with resignation. He really didn’t want to tell his brother anything of his fragmentary information but there was a chance that Mycroft knew something that would help the detective solve this riddle.

“Lovely area. And?”

“Nothing. Sussex Downs. Does it mean anything to you? Any connections?”

“I’ll ask secret service. Maybe they’ll find something. Check your email and find out what is going on instead of playing a perfect host. Anything else?”

“Moriarty’s phone. The previous one.” he said quickly and regretted his words a moment later. “You know the number. Can you check if it’s active?”

“I don’t think so. If someone of his men is using that number, it’s certain that he secured it so there is no legal way to...”

“Try illegal then.” Sherlock interrupted nervously. “Do you think it’s some survivor moron from Moriarty’s web trying to copy him?”

“Actually, that’s the only possibility. And I hope, for myself and the whole country, I’m not wrong. Keep digging and if you find anything out, write about it on your website, because I’m sure that, whoever it is, this is the place where he waits for the answer, as it was last time. And don’t  bother Moriarty’s phone. Keep in touch.” Mycroft said and hung up.

After Sherlock finished the talk, checked his mailbox and waited in excitement few seconds before he opened first of two unread messages, sent from unknown number. _“Is drinking champagne with your friends better for you than playing with me? What an ingratitude. Hurry up. You have time till midnight. The clock is ticking. Tic-toc. XXX”_ he read the message several times, realizing fearfully what the last warning meant. And then he opened the second message, sent only two minutes ago. _“I’d never thought that dating you would be arranged through your brother. Seriously, the VIRGIN term... it’s more than adequate. The clock is ticking and I hear it aaaaaaall the time. Do you?”_ . Before he could even try to analyse it, his phone rang again. On his mailbox few new messages appeared, one by one and Sherlock had some problems with opening them. Each of them made his eyes bigger and bigger and after reading the last one he realized that his hand is squeezing the phone so tight like he was about to crush it.

_Tonight London sky is going to be so bright with fireworks. Or not, if you dance with me._

_I loved dancing with you._

_...it was so delightful when you let me lead._

_Can’t wait._

_Remember about midnight’s fireworks._

_Tic-toc, tic-toc._

_Remember me._

_Did you miss me?_

_Tic-toc, tic-toc._

_Did you miss me?_

_Did you miss me?_

_XXX_

“Sussex Downs” he muttered, too quiet anyone could hear it. And then he suddenly turned around  grabbing his hair. He screamed with frustration, which caused everyone in his living room stop talking and turn into his direction to look at him. “The case! I need my laptop!” he said and jumped to his desk where John put all his equipment. The doctor tried to stop him and probably asked what’s going on but Sherlock didn’t pay any attention to him. He passed by Mrs Hudson and Molly’s date and, balancing on one leg, threw himself to a table, taking one of the laptops. He pulled it so strongly that a tower of the others rocked dangerously.

“Sherlock! We’re having a party here!” Mrs Hudson yelled, outraged by his behaviour.

“And I’m having a case” he snorted, lying with a laptop on his couch. Donovan puffed angrily when he made her move without any excuses. Sherlock pushed away John’s hand when he was trying to take his computer. “I just talked to... Mycroft. There is a terrorist attack coming up tonight and I need to solve this so PLEASE, if you don’t want to watch _real fireworks_ , let me take care of this!”

“Wait...what? What attack?” Lestrade mumbled, involuntarily grabbing his phone.

“A terrorist attack. Are you deaf or just switched your brain with Anderson?” the detective snapped, googling the name Sussex Downs. He frantically started checking descriptions of the following links but they were all about National Park, tourism and rare species of vermin and mosses. Sherlock was hardly aware of the fact that people around were talking to him, asking questions, however, no matter how remarkably disturbing they were, he tried to ignore them… And managed to do that until the moment when he felt John’s hand on his shoulder and realized that the doctor is leaning forward, so close to him, simply staring at a screen of detective’s laptop.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked and his voice sounded the same as when they were running together out of their flat to throw themselves into another riddle, catch a taxi to Scotland Yard or just hunt the criminals. John’s fingers were warm, his grip strong. But still not so insistent that Sherlock could simply tell him to back off without feeling guilty.

“Sussex Down” he said shortly, opening another website which turned out to be a portal about selling estates. There was a moment when he felt reviving visions but they vanished when John sat comfortably beside him, moving his hand involuntarily and unconsciously touching detective’s hair with his fingertips. A single wisp tickled Sherlock’s neck and John, somehow noticing that, slipped unruly strand behind his friend’s ear. That one second when he touched a skin on Sherlock’s neck was enough for him to lose concentration and forget all his thoughts. He kept staring at the screen of his laptop, reading a text without understanding it, as if he became illiterate. And breathless, because he realised that he couldn’t breathe for a while, afraid to move and accidently touch the doctor’s hand which was still too close to his skin. It lasted only two, maybe three seconds so when he came back to reality and heard John once again, the man didn’t sound like there was a necessity to repeat the question.

“What are you looking for in Sussex Downs?”

“Connection to Moriarty” he answered shortly, still thoughtlessly scrolling the website. House offers, rental, sale, lease. He shook off and closed the page just to check another link but suddenly he realized that something changed in the living room. The atmosphere was tense and somehow... awkward. That was the only term that came to his mind.

“Don’t tell me you believe in those conspiracy theories!” Donovan snorted since she was the first one who got her voice back. „Moriarty is gone. He died on the roof of Barts and took Richard Brooks along.”

“If Lestrade transplanted himself Anderson’s brain, you must have _sucked out_ his whole stupidity.” Sherlock said thoughtlessly. These words couldn’t be more effective: a dead silence reigned in the living room while Donovan jumped off her seat and ran to the kitchen.

“You are...” Lestrade wanted to say something but in the end he stayed silent and tried to get up. Molly stopped him and went to the angry Sally alone, staring at Sherlock like she was about to kill him.

“A case” detective said with emphasis. He pretended not to care about awaiting nervousness presented by all his guests in the living room. “I told you I have a case” he added in a lower voice, peeping at John’s face that was full of anger, condemnation and... disappointment? Sherlock saw all these emotions in his eyes every time he did something that John considered as contrary to the society’s rules. But this time the detective didn’t have much time to care about it. “What could Moriarty have in common with damn Sussex Downs!”

“Maybe he is spending a great time in a shelter of untouched nature, trying to convalesce after he _shot his head off_?” John snapped sarcastically.

“Listen to yourself, Sherlock.” Mary interfered. She was the only one who seemed to be more amused than dismayed by his behaviour. “Where did the Sussex Downs idea come from?”

“I don’t have the time to explain that to you” he opened another website and once again almost wailed in frustration. Mary rolled her eyes and when Sherlock closed the laptop and grabbed his head, she giggled shortly. Detective shut his eyes and tried to connect lovely region of Sussex Down with... with anything related to Moriarty. He was running through his Mind Palace but there was no direction, like he was in unfamiliar place. And when he felt John’s hand on his own shoulder, heard his nervous and concerned voice – he _stumbled_. He stumbled in his own head and when he tried to hold on to anything he realized it isn’t a place he created. Once again, Sherlock was in Magnussen’s house, thinking how a huge mistake he made... But the vision changed suddenly into Barts roof, then a cemetery, where he saw his own grave, a swimming pool – the moment when he decided to blow up the whole charge. The office, where he faced Mary’s alter ego. He still was there and the woman was aiming to him with a gun all the time.

“Sherlock!!!” he finally heard and when he opened his eyes, he was in a living room, once again. John was bending over him, squeezing his wrist and probably tried to feel his pulse. “For the love of God, what is the matter with you? Are you high again? You were completely away...!”.

Sherlock turned around and the first thing he looked at was a clock. It was 30 minutes to eleven what meant that he lost a contact with reality for several minutes.

“I’m okay” he mumbled and pushed John away, more harshly than he intended to.

“Janine was right, you are way more insane that anyone could ever imagine” Mary said and nodded to John, giving him a sign that he should leave Sherlock alone.

“What did you say...?” detective muttered jumping off his place.

“Janine...”

“Janine!” he shouted and in one second he started to SEE again. All puzzles were in right places. How could he be so blind?

_“Where’s the cottage?”_

_“Sussex Downs.”_

_“Nice”_

_“It’s gorgeous. There’s beehives but I’m getting rid of those.”_

_“ …Analysis shows it’s from Sussex with London mud overlaying it.”_

_“How do you know?”_

_“Pollen. Clear as a map reference. South of the river. This kid came to London from Sussex 20 years ago and left the trainers behind.”_

_“What happened to him?”_

_“Something bad.”_

_“…Clever you, guessing about Carl Powers. I never liked him. Carl laughed at me, so I stopped him laughing.”_

_“…Nice touch, this. The pool, where little Carl died. I stopped him. I can stop John Watson, too. Stop his heart.”_

_“…Your friends will die if you don’t.”_

_“John?”_

_“Not just John.”_

_“ Everyone.”_

_“ Mrs Hudson?”_

_“ EVERYONE.”_

“Damn it, Janine!” he pulled his phone from a pocket of his pants and, ignoring concerned questions, he chose the right number and waited for the answer, looking at a clock and counting signals. Three. Five. After the sixth one a voicemail was set and if Janine doesn’t answer...

“Sherlock? What a surprise!” Sherlock heard familiar voice and he felt a huge relief.

“Where are you?” he asked, without any insincere kindnesses.

“In Dublin at _New Year’s Eve party_ , like all normal people. Are you calling me to wish me all best for the new year?”

“I’m calling you to ask if...” he faltered. “...if everything’s okay...”

“Couldn’t be better. The most expensive club, fantastic drinks and three guys tried to hit on me already. Can you believe? Is this the magic of a famous detective’s mistress or what?”

“Are you sure that everyth...”

“Aren’t you delightful, Sherl.” she said and suddenly her voice changed into something that he never heard from this funny, romantic - in acceptable way - and finally deadly revengeful woman. Her Irish accent became more recognizable and in her tone there was something threatening and somehow mocking. “When you finally realize that it was all about me, you only think I can be in danger. You are worrying about me. You care! I’m sure you would save me, like it was with Irene. Though both of us used and humiliated you.”

“What are you...”

“Either way...” Janine didn’t let him interrupt. “Congratulations. The riddle is solved. The house on this video was mine. You have no idea how amusing it was for us to put random words together on those information boards, knowing that you will be trying to find out what they meant. Not mention about this whole scenery, snow, screens... Maybe I missed my vocation. Maybe I should become scenarist...”

“For you? In _plural_?” Sherlock asked, falling heavily on his couch. The excess of information and deduction made him feel dizzy.

“Oh, Sherl... you didn’t actually think that I _am_ Moriarty, did you?” she giggled in such a way that he had no doubts left who... who she was similar to. Even if he didn’t realize it until now. “I’ll tell him you didn’t lose all of your abilities, as we thought. So... I recommend sending sappers team to Savoy Hotel. And you can go back to whatever you did with your guests.”

“You do realize that this conversation can be bugged?” Sherlock asked what made Janine laugh like she used to do in her normal version.

“You boasted all the time that you’re able to get rid of our dear Mike’s surveillance methods from your own phone. And I made mine a little bit improved, if I can call it that way. Alright, time for me to go! I didn’t buy my new dress for heaps of money to stay in a shadow and talk on the phone with my ex-boyfriend.”

“Why did you tell me about this hotel?”

“Because a bomb’s location wasn’t the riddle. I was.” she said with amusement and Sherlock almost heard this particular Moriarty’s mockery. “Tell Mary and John I wish them all best for the New Year. Oh, and prepare yourself for a guest in the nearest future. Put some nice clothes on. All in all, it will be like a date with your old love, don’t you think?”

“Janine...”

“Take care, Sherl!” she said and hung up without waiting for his answer.

“Sherlock...?” John spoke hesitantly and sat on the couch beside a detective. The man was staring dully at the wall and after a while he turned his head to John. To his worried friend who, without even realizing it, made him connect Janine with Sussex Downs and Carl’s Powers killer in only few minutes. Without him, Holmes would be struggling with that riddle for many hours. And solution came so unexpected, because of Mary’s thoughtless comment, not thanks to his abilities.

Janine was somehow connected to Moriarty.

It was possible that she knew about Sherlock before he even took the criminal consultant case.

It was possible that she was part of Moriarty’s web or even more! She could be the centre of it and Jim was only a marionette in her hands. That last one was hardly probable but Sherlock couldn’t deny it just because it sounded ridiculous. For now it was certain that they worked together on the television web and made this video with her house. Janine had some purpose in this chaos and clearly she was having a great time.

More and more questions left without any answers, what was the point of this all and if Moriarty – or his double that committed suicide in front of Sherlock! - was really alive. All in all it was possible that Jim’s from IT version was the closest to the truth and that he was dead for 3 years. And so his guest would be somebody else, hidden in the shade all the time, who was the head of this whole theatre, who controlled this all and who never showed his face. But this idea turned out to be revolting for Sherlock. Though he was supposed to wish the Moriarty-he-met everything the worst, deep in his heart he was glad that it was a chance to face him again. One of the reasons was possibility of finding out what was Janine’s purpose in this all because he was sure she won’t say anything more than she did few minutes ago.

“I have to call Mycroft...” he finally said, realizing that John is staring at him like he was waiting for something.  “I have to...” he broke off in the middle of the sentence and looked at his phone. One unread message. His heart stopped for a few seconds when he saw who was the sender of it but the content was a little disappointing.

Congratulations. XXX

***

The rest of the party was quite boring what didn’t surprise Sherlock even with lack of his social skills. When he talked with Mycroft, the Savoy Hotel turned out to be a place where his brother and the rest of a government éminence grise currently were. They were immediately  evacuated and the bomb was found in a half an hour. Lestrade and Donovan were paged because of this whole situation. Molly and her Barts date left a quarter past midnight.

John, Mary and Mrs Hudson were watching TV. Instead of entertaining programs, there were only news about a bomb found in a hotel. The chaos was connected to Moriarty straight away and now people were listening to never ending conspiracy theories. Sherlock was snorting with pity from time to time and he didn’t even bother to comment on some of them. He stared at the screen of his computer, listening to the reporters with one ear and peeking at his phone as if it was about to ring once again. He watched YouTube videos knowing at the same time he won’t find there anything new – there was no point of using the same idea twice... What’s more, three of those clips with a Janine’s house part came back to their original versions. Sherlock saved some of those links but he didn’t believe they will be useful in the future.

He was aimlessly surfing the Internet, drinking a champagne that Mrs Hudson brought him, and longingly for his guests to go home. He wasn’t able to focus and it wasn’t even because of John’s presence but the whole atmosphere. Waiting. Anxiety. Hormones. All these things disturbed him and so he had to consider the rest of an evening as a huge waste of time. He grabbed his phone and once again started to move it between his fingers, planning the next steps.

Three years ago he would take John and in the middle of a night rent a car so they could drive to Sussex, without thinking about anything else. Maybe he would do such thing even few months ago however in this case Mary would go with them as well. He would circle his room, absorbing John’s admiration about his eloquence... He would be excited about this adventure. But now he was only waiting for John to go because he didn’t want to tell the doctor that the case is still in progress or share his conclusions with him. Even more! He didn’t want to tell him that the fun has just began.

Lost in his thoughts he didn’t notice when his apartment became empty. Only when he felt that John sat beside him on a couch, he realized that TV was off and both women disappeared. Sherlock peeped at his friend with a forced smile, insincere on purpose.

“The party’s over?”

“Mary went with Mrs Hudson to a neighbour.”

“Oh...” Sherlock came back to staring at his laptop.

“Sherlock, what is this all about? What did Janine say? How did you know that...”

“Moriarty is connected to Sussex and Janine said something that led me to the bomb. It will be better for you, if it’s all you know.”

“Can you be more specific? _What_ did she say?” he pressed and when Sherlock didn’t even look at him, John took his laptop away, attracted the detective’s attention. Holmes stared at doctor’s  hands, right one, still holding the laptop, and the left, lying between them on a couch, definitely too close to Sherlock’s thigh. He wanted to move back but that would make John even more suspicious and he would ask another question about hiding too many things from him.

“Something you would never understand.” Sherlock said coldly, which made Watson squint his eyes in anger.

“After years of working with you, believe me, I understand more than you can even imagine.”

“I don’t remember much.” he answered and now John was just furious.

“You always remember _EVERYTHING_!” doctor snapped harshly. “Sherlock, for the love of God, tell me what’s going on! Every time you hide something from me...”

“Yes, I KNOW. _You think, something’s wrong_.” Sherlock interrupted, remembering their last argue about it. “You cannot help me with this case. Forget it. Enjoy new year, take care of Mary, not investigations. For few months you won’t be able to conduct them, anyway.”

“My marriage to Mary didn’t change anything. We were solving the cases after we got married, even when she was already pregnant. Why do you keep going back to this point?”

“Because I assume that you don’t want to make your child an orphan before it will be even born. As long as you work with me, there could be such possibility...” he said coldly which made John speechless for a while. Sherlock wasn’t sure what was more effective: his unfriendly tone or words that were painfully true. Of course, marriage or a pregnant wife wouldn’t be a problem to him, he didn’t consider this as an argument against investigating. But during past few years he finally started to understand how people’s minds work. They were dominated by emotions, attached  to each other too close to give this all up for adventures and real life. John was exactly like that. So when he mentioned potential orphan hood of the doctor’s unborn child, he got the point. “All you have to do is to stay away from Janine.”

“What does she have to do with that?”

“No idea. But I’ll find it out. So far I can tell you she’s a person you shouldn’t keep in touch with. Tell Mary the same.”

“Sherlock, this...” he faltered. “This is absurd. I know she went with her accusations too far but still it’s not the reason for you to say she is _dangerous_. “ he stopped talking for a while, staring at Sherlock’s face. “Did she piss you off that much, so now you’re making up some ridiculous stories about her? What she told was... well, strong and malicious. However it was nothing but the truth. She didn’t ruin your reputation or endangered you, like it was with that damn Riley.”

“First of all, YES, she actually DID ruin my reputation. Because reading how unfulfilled of a stud I am was worse than that crap Moriarty wrote. Secondly, I bear her no grudge. Not anymore, at least. My warning is caused by something different.” he said and stood up and then took two steps back because he knew that what he was about to say could cause losing at least two teeth. “If someone has problems with wrong judgement towards women, it’s you. I had a feeling that Mary’s hiding something since we first met and you... you wouldn’t believe me even after million years that she was a contract killer and she almost killed me, if you didn’t hear it straight from her. She could continue her profession from last years and you wouldn’t even suspect anything. Well, maybe she is going to, because you know what? People don’t change. And she’ll never be a model wife, who enjoys cooking and changing diapers, like you’ll never be an intellectual.”

When John suddenly stood up, Sherlock stepped back a little more but it was unnecessary. The doctor was so furious that his face became pale but he didn’t even look at Holmes. His slamming the door was enough for Sherlock to know that he won’t come back for a while. He looked in this direction for a few minutes realizing that he won’t see his friend for a long time however it was the best that could happen: Sherlock had a chance to get rid of his sentimental resistance, come back to his intellectual efficiency so necessary right now and John... John was safe.

He squeezed his fingers around a phone that he was still holding and after few seconds he chose Bill Wiggins number.

 _We’re going to Sussex._ He wrote and checked all car rental shops that were open on a day after New Years Eve. _Tomorrow. 8 a.m. Car rental on York Street._

***

Bill was on time, quite conscious, he rather didn’t look like a person who spent the whole last night at a party. But it wasn’t surprising at all. Sherlock was sure that he wouldn’t even notice that yesterday was New Year’s Eve if there weren’t any fireworks and all these TV stations didn’t trumpet about the terrorist attack and a bomb in Savoy Hotel. When Sherlock got out of the cab, Bill was standing propped against some column. His bag was lying between his feet while he was reading. When he saw the detective who was walking in his direction, he hid his book immediately.

“A case?” Bill asked and Sherlock nodded, looking for his cigarettes. Bill raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment his return to smoking habit. “Why Sussex?”

“Because that’s where my old friend lives. She has something in common with Moriarty and I have to find out what it is.”

“Are we going to talk to her?”

“We are going to search her house.” Sherlock answered and gave Bill some printed printscreens on which he could see Janine’s house. The man laughed but carefully looked at those pictures, frowning few times.

“Cool. Do we have any addresses? Those places and companies...” he pointed one of information boards on the photo. “I don’t think they actually exist. At least the names are not telling me anything.”

“I have some potential addresses. I wrote them down, on the other side, here.” Sherlock said, pretended that he didn’t hear Bill’s words about non existing places since he found it out by himself the day before. “Let’s go inside” he stubbed out his half-burned cigarette, pointed the door of Coretec Cars.

They didn’t talk about a case until a contract of the short-term lease and all formalities were signed; after that, they took their places in a rented jeep. A sleepy man who was behind the counter, looked suspiciously at Bill but with his paleness, used clothes and a hood on his head Sherlock would be surprised if no one looked at his friend that way. The man checked Sherlock’s documents twice, to confirm his identity but in the end he didn’t cause any problems. Without any comments he gave them the keys, registration document and confirmed insurance.

“Few addresses” Bill said, looking once again at photos. “So you don’t know where EXACTLY your ex lives?”

“What makes you think this is about my ex?”

“Janine. It’s kinda obvious.” Bill snorted and put all printings on dashboard. “So?”

“She bought a house in Sussex Down few months ago. I checked all sold offers from that time, wrote down the most probable addresses and we are going to find the right one, from the photo.”

“Asking the doctor or his wife would be much easier.”

“They can’t know I’m going there.”

“And how can you be sure the house will be empty?”

“Janine was at the party in Dublin. As far as I know her, she won’t come back so soon.” he turned left on a south way and grimaced when he remembered his relationship with that woman. “I suppose that jumped to someone’s bed and will stay there for a while.”

“So she is that kind of a lady? Well, if someone believed in her stories...”

“Oh, shut up” Sherlock snapped more and more irritated. He didn’t even bother to convince Bill that those stories about his and Janine’s sexual adventures were nothing but lies. He heard too many ridiculous insinuations to try to deny them. Especially, since the only one person in whole England who shouldn’t believe those gossips, Mycroft, smiling his way, waved to him with a newspaper with Janine’s face on the cover. And even John... “Someone presented himself as Moriarty wrote me yesterday.” he said, trying to change the subject as fast as it was possible, however in his head, he was looking at his brother’s and John faces all the time. How they reacted when Janine’s gossips got to them. _He made me wear the hat. Sherlock took advantage of me. All he wanted was my body. He’s cold as ice but the sex was mind-blowing._ He shook his head, trying to focus on the road and summarize yesterday’s conclusions to Bill. It didn’t take him much time, he told only about concrete facts: YouTube, strange videos, theory that they were recorded in Sussex Downs, messages, connecting this place to Janine, calling her, call from Mycroft, New Year’s Eve ruined for all those people that were having a party near to Savoy Hotel.

“Can I take a look at those messages?” his friend asked and Sherlock, without saying a word, gave him his phone. “Wow, nice. Looks like a spam from some creepy stalker.”

“Someone has to know a lot about him to do it.”

“Unless it’s the real Moriarty.”

“It doesn’t have to be him” he snapped because Bill’s stubbornness became really boring. “Janine knows who it is” for a moment he stopped talking and then continued “That’s why I have to search her house.”

“What do you expect to find there?”

“It doesn’t matter what I will find, it’s what I WON’T find.” Sherlock said. He thought Bill would roll his eyes or be filled with admiration: two of John’s reactions, he showed when detective was saying something equally enigmatic during an investigation. But Bill just nodded and suddenly got lost in thoughts.

“Everything that could tell us that’s a concrete person, will be in the typical lockers. It will be left on purpose, it will be something that Janine and Moriarty...”

“Or someone pretends to be Moriarty.”

“...And _Moriarty_ want you to find. I suspect they already know you’re going to Sussex.”

“Probably you’re right. And obviously, it can be a trap.”

“Obviously.”

“And even if you know that, you decided to go with me?”

“When you were solving cases with the doctor, it usually was you who ended up battered. He was hurt only when you were away. I have nothing to be afraid of.” Bill laughed and once again checked messages from Moriarty’s old number. “What’s up with this dancing thing? I mean...” he faltered when Sherlock looked at him like he used to look at Anderson. “I assume it’s not literal. He called you a virgin?”

“Irene Adler’s fault” Sherlock said and kept staring at the road.

“You never told me about it...”

“He called my brother the Iceman” he answered and nodded at his phone. “Anything else? Go on, try to deduce something.”

“First message – nothing important will come up later.” Bill answered after several minutes, what surprised Sherlock because he didn’t think Bill would accept his challenge. “He teases you, gives you a time to solve his riddle. No implied meanings. A prompt: time, drawing your attention. Nothing new. But your brother... He wrote Mycroft, right?” the detective nodded but didn’t say anything. “He became impatient because you were too slow or... because you didn’t care about his actions. _He hears a clock ticking and asks if you hear it as well,_ he could have been somewhere near you so he suggested that whatever he hears, you can hear it as well. _Or not, if you dance with me_. and then _I loved dancing with you_. And those next messages. I don’t think he really wanted to blow up the hotel because he knew it was too much risk that Mycroft won’t let you two... you know... dance together. And that would spoil the whole fun, he was waiting for.”

“It wouldn’t be possible for Mycroft to let or not let us do anything after blowing up. He was in this hotel that night.”

“Exactly, he wasn’t intending to do that.” Bill said even more sure. He gave a phone to Sherlock and took more comfortable position. “If he killed your brother, you wouldn’t like to play hide and seek with him, and this is all he cares about right now. He wouldn’t take a risk to make you so furious that your only thought would be to take revenge and destroy him. What was the result of your last Big Game? Big Hiding for you and probably Big Boredom for him.”

 _“It doesn’t have to be Moriarty._ And if he killed Mycroft...” Sherlock stopped talking, trying to imagine such a situation but his head was empty. He knew exactly what his reaction would be if someone hurt John or even Mary but somehow he doubted that it would be the same with Mycroft’s death. He had no idea what his brother’s death would do to him and this was disturbing.

“If he killed him, it wouldn’t be fun anymore” Bill said. “You can say whatever you want, I know you two don’t love each other. But a brother is a brother. Siblings are sometimes more than parents. Those are something like our first _compulsory friends._ Trauma and a feeling of guilt is much bigger. Of course if you don’t have your own family because in that case...”

“If you’re trying to imply I would cry after Mycroft, I suggest you to change your dealer.”

“It doesn’t matter what would you do. It’s what you wouldn’t do.” he said. “These are your words. No matter what people do or think. It’s what they don’t. That’s why he didn’t kill Mycroft. He showed you he can. But didn’t intend to.”

“Maybe.” Sherlock squeezed his hands on the wheel and speeded up a little. When Bill realized that conversation is over, he did what he was supposed to do: he looked at the back of a page where addresses were and turned a GPS on. After that he took his book and totally lost himself in reading.

 

***

 


	3. Sussex Downs

 

***

During his night searching, Sherlock found seven most likely addresses and twice of places less probable but still meeting the criteria – twenty places to check in all. Snow, heather, bees, recent sale, middle-high and high standards, reliable price range. He looked through hundreds of property offers however, as if out of spite, most of them that were the most suspicious didn’t have any proper photos – if they had any. That made amount of them much larger. But he didn’t want to take that risk to delete even one of the uncertain ones because it was a chance that one of those could be THE one. And also, Sherlock couldn’t forget the fact that Janine and so-called-Moriarty might dig into sales portals since they were hacking YouTube videos. But it was an emergency solution – he could call Mary (John wasn’t an option right now) – so he didn’t care that much. Especially since he had a feeling that one of the selected places was the proper one.

Two of the first locations, on which they wasted almost fourty minutes, turned out to be a blind alley but they visited those places since both of them were the first on their list and the road while the men drove to west part of Sussex Downs. Before they even arrived to the county, Bill made surprisingly good sketch of the whole south part of England and marked all locations that they were about to check, including the most important roads and cities. Sherlock was more than grateful for that. He didn’t like to struggle with maps other than London’s and John never helped him with that when they were going somewhere – he sucked at geography, it definitely wasn’t his strong point.

Not all of the addresses were complete so they had to prepare themselves for more extensive searching on quite huge areas. Sometimes information about some property was restricted to only a name of a locality. However, in most of the cases they were godforsaken dumps with small number of buildings so Sherlock didn’t expect any problems with finding the one they were looking for. Local people were always more than willing to tell some interesting facts about new neighbours. The only problem was a time that he had to spent on visiting all suspicious places.

“What do you propose to check right now?” he asked when they stopped by in a roadside café, near to Chichester to buy a coffee and some junk food - which was claimed by Bill. When they were waiting for it, Sherlock took their map and pointed two locations that were only 20 miles away from a place they currently were.

“It’s only one village. No addresses but it won’t take much time and it will be all of west parts. And then here... and here” he pointed two more locations, the most extended on south west and place practically beyond Sussex Downs, still looked too suspicious that Sherlock could ignore them. “After that, I’d like to drive this road, Chichester-Worthing-Lewes-Polegate. There’s a possibility that we’ll get into traffic jams but look” he moved his finger through the map on GPS. “Practically every few miles we’ll have to turn on side roads to check other places and this way seems to be the best one. Besides, if we stay for a night in the middle of nowhere, even GPS won’t help us.”

“So we’ll be driving A27 road and turn north from time to time... well, two times south. And we can visit Brighton because I have some good memories of this city. There is one place to check in the neighbourhood, by the way.”

“Are we going to stay there for a night?”

“We will have no choice if my calculations are right.” Sherlock muttered with some reluctance. “Before we even get to the first place it will be 11 p.m. And there are ten places on the way from Brighton to that location. There is no point in searching for something after dark. This...” he pointed the location marked by X letter, near to the city. “...is at the end of our reserve list. Though there are heathers, bees and other clues but the standard is far away from high and it doesn’t look so charming, like Janine described it. And she isn’t delighted at just anything. We’ll check it quickly. Of course if there will be nothing found till that time.”

“And exactly why are we going there?”

“It’s on the way to Brighton. Besides, I’m not going to miss any place that could be the one we’re looking for.” Sherlock took his coffee that a barmaid was giving to him and he nodded at Bill to hurry up with his order.

“Do you have any pictures?” Bill asked, pushing a handful of fries in his mouth. “I mean... you said it’s not that charming there... so I suppose have some.” he specified when Sherlock looked at him suspiciously.

“Only inside. And some views that look like the owner want to show as little as possible. I can’t see a house from the outside at none of them but the shape of the windows was as on the video. They were ordinary, but not so much to miss that detail, even if Janine mentioned it at the very beginning. Either way...” he nodded at door. “We won’t get there earlier than evening. And for now we have the whole list to comprehend.”

Although at the very beginning of this trip Sherlock was excited with an adventure, each of locations that turned out to be dead point, made him more and more dispirited. Asking for an information caused too much wasted time than he expected and telling the same story every time – they want to visit a friend in her new house but the address is wrong; it’s supposed to be a New Year’s surprise so no, they can’t call her – wasn’t funny anymore. Usually, he loved that way of investigation. Loitering with John through wilderness, playing different roles in front of people they met, all these pranks... Bill wasn’t a bad companion but he lacked something. It was less chaotic, everything was so well organised. It was just unbearably boring although the case seemed to be more interesting than the others which he leaded since he was back. Saying nothing about Magnussen’s issue that, obviously, was mind blowing but the effects of solving it, however Sherlock denied it, actually were horrible.

He missed John, his idiotic questions, lack of geography knowledge, looking at the maps like they were some ancient runes, grumbling about how unkind Sherlock is when he stops pretending it and how detective unfeelingly lied to harmless people. He missed nights spent in god forsaken places, evenings with a glass of poor wine or even worse whiskey, John’s phone with all those claiming messages from his girlfriends, his annoyed look when he called each of them, trying to save another crumbling relationship. He missed the dark nights when he heard John breathing on a bed next to his and mornings when his friend could hardly get up and after few minutes later look like new-born with breakfast in one hand and coffees to go in the second one. How he did it? Sherlock didn’t have a clue.

Bill could have most of these qualities – Sherlock was about to find it out – maybe without nervous texting with his partners but it simply _wasn’t the same._ Sherlock looked at his companion who perfectly showed all the shortcuts and didn’t make a mistake even once when GPS showed nothing. He didn’t talk rubbish and his observations and conclusions were shrewd. There was nothing to tease him about and maybe that annoyed detective the most. Sherlock’s ideal wasn’t someone who made and talked everything so perfectly – he couldn’t correct such a person or be a smartass – and besides... venial defects and imperfection made people interesting. Bill was intelligent, neutral and didn’t piss him off most of the time (ignoring his never-ending requests for drive-breaks) but because of that he became really boring after a while, even if Sherlock has some different expectations. Mrs Hudson had an interesting past and behind her old-lady clumsiness there was a courage and strength that no one could expect. Irene was a master of not-being-dull, Mary turned out to be unholy and definitely not innocent blonde and Janine – she had nothing of those hopelessly in love, weak idiots. Moriarty was a psycho and it was so much to accuse about him that for Sherlock he was the nearest to ideal, and John... was just John.

If Bill wanted to join this group of _really interesting people,_ he should have turned into some  creature from different galaxy.

It was almost 7 p.m. when the last house on the way to Brighton turned out to be a mistake. Because of the season of a year, it was quite dark and raining. Bill was shifting from one foot to the other, waiting for Sherlock to finish his smoking and loudly dreaming about skipping the last planned location and finding a place to spend the night in. Maybe the detective would agree with him but the contrariness and will to check what will be Bill’s reaction for postponing searching for a place to sleep were much stronger.

“We don’t have a precise address” he groaned once again. “You were the one who said it can’t be there. Please, let’s take some rooms and we will start searching tomorrow morning.”

“We have a village and description from the website how to get there.”

“It’s another hour, anyway...” he said but stopped talking when Sherlock sent him the most killing look he could afford.

“We are going to this place _today._ End of discussion.” he said, enjoying power of his tone for a while. “It’s quite early. Besides, if we’ll check this house today, we won’t have to go back tomorrow. Look at the road and tell me where to go.” the detective ordered, slowing their car down in front of roundabout. And so Bill, if he wanted or not, took the map and put the fragmented address into his phone. After a while, they were driving through A23 and then turned on a simple asphalt dual carriageway and finally, on a forest road where they almost hit a motorcycle. This time the Mother Fortune was generous and they found the marked place without any problems. They didn’t have to desperately ask people for help or look at the houses similar to this one from their map.  Despite of the dark, the road seemed to lead them itself and after few minutes a forest ended and Sherlock saw more and more heather at the both sides of road. It didn’t have to be any sign but when Bill told him to turn right, in a narrow, well looking street, saying that they are almost there, his heartbeat raised like crazy.

Although they had something about 100 metres to their destination point, there wasn’t even a second passed when Sherlock realized the bright, nice but not too exaggeratedly lovely house is the property that he saw on a low quality video. The trees, low, hardly to be seen hills, even few pillars on which – obviously not anymore – there were hung some electronic information boards. The property was partially surrounded by a fence and dimly lit by some LED lamps, not very tasteful. Though there were lots of security logos. But it wasn’t a problem.

“Oh shit...” Bill mumbled when Sherlock stopped their car in safe distance from the house. “It’s... it’s... I can’t believe it. On those printscreens it looked much more expensive. But it’s just... a simple house. Big, indeed, nicely placed but... It isn’t a palace though.”

“I told you it seemed to be too cheap for Janine.” Sherlock answered and quietly got out of the car.

“Are you sure, there’s no one inside?”

“Let’s find this out.” he said and, with a stupid smile, he passed a board with security logo of a company that was supposed to secure this place.

“What are you going to do if she’s inside?”

“Break into, either way.” Sherlock went to a wall of the building and started to glide his hands on it till the moment he felt a small box. “Alarm wiring. One of two. Take care of it, I’ll look for the second one.”

“Won’t you check if there’s no...”

“The lights are off, only a lamp over a sink is left. It’s quite normal when you’re gone for a short time. Two effective alarms are on, not too typical for Janine, because even if it was about work, she didn’t care much about security systems and she always had her apartment open when she was inside. The garage is open and empty. The last tyre tracks...” he nodded at the ground near to him. „...from before yesterday. She must have left on the airport by her car. It isn’t surprising because she’s too attached to her SMART to call a cab to this place.”

“She could have go to a party by a car...” Bill said but without any conviction.

“When you’re tired, you lose your ability to think.” Sherlock commented his words and threw himself on the ground, lighting down part of the wall. “She left her house yesterday, not earlier than 4 p.m. Guessing by the way she drove, she was in hurry but not too much. Arriving to Dublin within couple of hours? Catching a ferry, risk of traffic jams, more traffic inspections? – all in all, it’s the last week of this year. I don’t think so. She had to catch a plane.”

“As long as she really was there. She could be lying, you know.” Bill said and smiled to Sherlock, showing disconnected alarm.

“She was there.”

“How do you know? Did you hacked the VIP lists of all clubs in Dublin?”

“I checked her Facebook.” he answered, tinkering with the second alarm and when he finally disconnected the first part, he stood up and went to a window, where was the other part of it. “Ten new friends since yesterday’s evening and each of them is a rich Irishman, hundreds of photos from a party and on every third is an 2014 inscription, bigger than her ego. And finally: automatic spying through her iPad.” he moved his fingers along the frame, gasped with irritation and went to backdoor, nodding at Bill, giving him a sign to follow. “Funny though. Janine said her phone is secured but she made such an idiotic mistake...”

“You broke into her iPad when you two were together.” it was more conclusion than a question. Sherlock answered with a wide, spiteful smile.

“She was turned on when I took photos of her in underwear so I had it in my hand many times.” he pressed the handle and frowned. “Odd...” Sherlock mumbled, let it go and tried again but with the same effect.

“One lock?”

“Yes but she has three and one of them is anti-breaking. She was _really_ in hurry. But it makes it all much easier.” he said and without dawdling started to pick a lock. „How much time it took? A quarter? Any thief could take everything from here and she wouldn’t even get compensation.”

“Maybe we’re not the first.” Bill laughed. He wanted to say something more but Sherlock silenced him as he finally opened the door.

A lamp in a kitchen was switched on, same as wall bracket in a hall. After a while, Sherlock decided to switch on the main lamp in a living room, just to have a better look on it. Janine’s house was at least 2 miles away from the nearest village so the detective doubted that anyone could be walking near to this place and if so, no one would actually care who exactly is in Janine’s house right now, so he didn’t even try to hide. There was no rush.

The interior of the house looked much better than the view from the outside. It also showed signs of recent presence, Janine’s for sure. On the open door of a large closet there were few dresses hanging, and the shoes – total mess, taken out from the new boxes. But it was the only place where clothes were in such a chaos, even in big bathroom was neatly. Actually, with its equipment – Jacuzzi, small table with women’s magazines and books on it, quite big chair and dressing table, covered by hundreds of make-up cosmetics – the bathroom looked more like a small SPA room. No left underwear or tights, what was so weird because Janine never cared much about neatness, even if she always had problem with a mess in Sherlock’s apartment. After a quick ‘tour’, he closed the door and went through a living room to a kitchen, connected with dining-room where Bill was looking at the stuff left on a worktop. The first thing that he noticed was a radio, playing quietly some music from 70’s but maybe she just forgot about it – if Janine left the light in the hall and a practically opened door, she could have forgotten about a radio. She sometimes was absent-minded and lived here not for a long time so maybe it was normal for her to skip all those safety habits but again – she’s all that.

“Remnants of a coffee, yesterday’s - considering the smell. There are lots of mugs in a dishwasher, two wine glasses. Good, if someone like the white one.” Bill said when he was sure that Sherlock will hear him. “Not two days ago she had a visitor.”

“She didn’t care much if she went to Ireland for hunting” Sherlock mumbled and opened a fridge, carefully looking what was inside.

“Quite a lot of food with short expiry times, so she will be back soon. Two open milk cartons and an unbelievable amount of fresh vegetables” he butted.

“So she’s trying to lose some weight and eats health food” the detective answered looking at other products. “A frozen latte? I’ve never seen her drinking it...”

“Maybe this guy from the day before yesterday was here more often and she started buying it for him.”

“Clearly.” Sherlock said and closed a fridge. He went closer to a small retro style bar, which actually didn’t quite fit here. “She didn’t grudge on alcohol as well. She hates whiskey but there are four bottles and...” he opened his eyes wider when he saw the kind that even Mycroft drank only on special occasions. “...and a good one. She wouldn’t have spent so much money on it.”

“Maybe he’s rich.”

“And do you think he would bring something like that to a one-night-stand woman?” Sherlock shook his head and looked through the whole place more suspiciously. He opened a cupboard and saw a few more products that Janine didn’t like and when he noticed Earl Gray, that smell made her sick, he frowned. “Maybe she cares more than I thought. Did you check the garbage?”

“Empty. We can check this one on the outside.”

“We’ll try when we finish searching here. There’s a basement and a floor left. Go downstairs and look around but don’t touch anything. Call me when you find something...” he broke off in the middle of the sentence when he thought he heard something but it was only Bill, moving a mug with unfinished coffee.

“Living-room?”

“Nothing interesting. Besides, I don’t think she’d keep evidence of her connection to Moriarty just like that, on a table in a living-room.” he said although he barely looked at through this room. “Leave this mug. You’re disturbing me.” Sherlock snapped turning his head to Bill who suddenly blinked nervously.

“I wasn’t even touching it right now...”

“Then what did I...?” Sherlock stopped talking as he heard the same sound and a moment after somebody flushed the toilet and they heard stifled steps.

“Shit! She’s here...” Bill whispered, clutching his head. “You said she won’t be here!”

“It’s not her” the detective mumbled and looked at a switch but it was too far from him, on the wall opposite to them. “Go to the back door and stay quiet.” he whispered and slowly slipped his hand to a pocket where he kept a gun.

“Where did you get this?” Bill asked in a low voice, fearfully pointing at the weapon.

“You don’t want to know” Sherlock answered and began to go back as well but when he heard again sound of the steps upstairs, distinctly this time, he lost a hope for quick and soundless escape. Whoever was there, right now was walking through the hall and probably noticed that the lights were on. It was possible that he or she was wondering if lights were left this way because _ordinary people_ used to forget such trivial things. However, the next sounds – loading a gun and silent steps – made Sherlock sure that it wasn’t an _ordinary person_ at all.

Detective went back into the kitchen and, noticing that thanks to this he can buy himself few seconds, he switched off a lamp over a sink; for now kitchen was darker than the living-room and lower part of the stairs, on which he could look from his place. What’s more, he had that advantage that the person upstairs couldn’t see him. He looked at Bill, who was standing behind him as if thunderstruck. Exactly at this moment Sherlock realized why John was simply far better... except for being John, obviously. The doctor wouldn’t have any problems to make a quick decision in such a moment. He wouldn’t panic, he probably would take control over the situation instead. He’d took Sherlock’s hand and run to the door because he wasn’t type of a man that foolishly plays confrontations in someone’s house. Bill, on the other hand, was standing like he’s paralysed, totally useless. He threatened by his unpredictable behaviour and even if he didn’t move, he was just unnecessary ballast that needed protection.

His thoughts were interrupted when he saw on the stairs, between vertical boards of balustrade, bare feet at first and then a lower part of a quite long, black gown. A creeping man, who was hardly heard, froze for a while but then took another step down. In this twilight Sherlock could see his gun but the lights dancing on the man’s shape stopped Sherlock from shooting, even if the man was a burglar or murderer – he wouldn’t dare. Giving away his position and relatively small chances of hitting a target weren’t worth any risk. Moreover, he didn’t intend to kill or hurt some guy while he was himself breaking into Janine’s house.

Meanwhile, the man stopped again for a moment and as he stepped down the shape of his body was seen to the arms. He was small, not very muscular, but his grip on a gun was firm. His finger was lying on a trigger so he could shoot in every moment; those were only things that Sherlock could watch – the stairs were twisting and right now his whole body were hidden in a shadow, so he could see more on contours shaping on the wall. Whoever it was, he knew how to behave in such a situation. He could be some damn security worker or policeman-lover and the shooting, what detective finally realized, could end for Holmes really badly. Though he was aware of the fact that confrontation wasn’t a good option, he decided to play other way.

“Janine? Is that you?!” he shouted, modulating his voice so he didn’t sound like himself. A second after that he bent down, just in case if the man had fingers faster than brain and decided to fire after hearing a voice. Sherlock added right away „The door was open so I came in.” and his tone was just a little bit more normal than before, but he still stayed bent. He looked angrily at Bill who was standing like a pillar of salt and turned to stairs again. Looking at the shadow, Sherlock realized that the man secured his gun and slipped it to his pocket so detective did the same, carefully taking one step towards living-room. And then another, in the middle of the third one he realized that a face of the man, standing only few steps from him, isn’t hidden under  a diagonal ceiling anymore. When Sherlock recognised him, for a moment he forgot how to breathe. His legs betrayed him so he stumbled and had to lean on a kitchen cabinet.

On this sound, _Richard Brook_ jumped over two stairs at once and now, when he was on the  ground floor he could look at the person in a kitchen. His face showed for a moment only honest and absolute shock. But after a while the man turned into Moriarty himself, with his malicious smile and the look of a psychopath. However, the moment when he wasn’t wearing his Moriarty’s mask – or quite the contrary, when he kept his face for potential Janine’s lover – he engraved himself in Sherlock’s memory. Engraved, memorized to later deduction, now had to disappear because his resurrection, one of Sherlock’s favourite criminals was something that made him forget about the whole world in one second.

“Sherlock, what a surprise! I thought it was a burglar or some of those moron lovers of my Janine.” he squeaked and opened his arms to welcome the detective. He switched the closest lamp and suddenly it became brightly so he was able to see the inside of a kitchen and Bill with his eyes wide open. “No way, you have new John! Johnny Boy! Go, get us some tea. And you, my love, come with me to the living-room.” he bowed to the side of a leather sofa and patiently, with a strange smile, he waited as Sherlock will go in pointed direction.

“Bill, do as he said.” detective hissed, over his shoulder and then he took some steps towards Moriarty, his nemesis, that was supposed to be dead and yet, was standing in front of him, with mocking smile and a sparkle of insanity, the same one he had in his eyes just before he _shot his head off,_ damn it!- Hello, James. You look good. For a dead man.

“Ain’t I?” Moriarty laughed and slid fingers through his hair, almost coquettishly. As he didn’t notice that obvious and double mockery in Sherlock’s voice. Despite of a fact that he actually was alive and it was a man that Sherlock met few times, including the Barts roof, he _didn’t look_ too well. Detective carefully watched all parts of his body as conclusions and remarks filled his head like an annoying spam.

He lost something about 10 pounds but definitely not in healthy way or by his own intention.  Too skinny hands and feet bones, hollow cheeks, protruding collarbones. No outline of muscles on chest and stomach – he was exercising long time ago but stopped because of some reasons. Few more wrinkles on his forehead meant that in the last few months he got furious or worried a lot. Not too healthy shade of complexion, but it wasn’t result of insomnia or tiredness. The reason could be long-term stress, probably prevented a short time ago. No shadows under the eyes although his lower eyelids were a little bit flabby; he slept well for some time but in the past there was a long time of an insomnia.

“Are you reading me?” Moriarty asked with a wan smile, staring at Sherlock as intensively as he did.

“Like an open book.” he answered and went closer to a shorter man. So close that Moriarty had to lift his chin to look into his eyes.

Recent hair-cut, a little bit too askew, definitely not made in an exclusive salon. Two, no, three cuts after shaving. Faded scar, made maybe a year ago, was stretched from one side of the larynx – he would say it was caused by a knife but he wasn’t sure, any sharp tool could do this. Characteristic burns on hands, probably made the same time. Moriarty was a little bit leaning, like he didn’t want to strain his left hip. Few more unidentified but healed some time ago wounds, and all of these were seen only on uncovered parts of his body, what about the others? Nervous, almost unnoticed batting an eyelid when Sherlock, maybe too urgently, moved his own hand and, without even thinking what he was doing, he drew a part of Moriarty’s collar to have a better view on these scars on his neck. Moriarty didn’t react and let him continue this odd inspection. When Sherlock moved his hand back, he didn’t show if there was any feeling of relief or not. It was obvious that Moriarty was tortured, probably for a long time and after that someone tried to kill him. Interesting, considering the fact that it had some reflection on his psyche – though Mycroft’s methods didn’t give any effects, more! Moriarty seemed to find them amusing.

“You done?”

“Yes, for now.”

“Won’t you share your conclusions?”

“We both know that I know that you know what exactly I know. It’s rather obvious that you showed me only what you wanted to show.” Sherlock said as he turned on a heel and walked towards the sofa. Moriarty went around it, still peeking at Sherlock and smiling in a strange way. After a few seconds he fell on a chair opposite to the detective.

“I thought you’d be asking me many questions. That’s what friends do after not seeing each other for such a long time.” he said, frowning like he used to do and looked toward the kitchen from where they could hear sound of boiling water. “How did you do that, Jim? What happened to you during that time? Why didn’t you let anyone know that you’re alive, Jim?” he squeaked with an unnaturally high voice and Sherlock recognised parody of Janine in his tone. “I think you know something about all those questions. You know how it is... you rise from the dead and... BOOM! Showing yourself again... Like Lazarus, right? Janine told me. It isn’t a secret anymore, is it?”

“Who’s Janine to you?”

“Guess.” Moriarty said melodiously.

“A cousin. Or half-sister.” Sherlock answered immediately, without even thinking.

“Impressive.” Moriarty shouted, clapping his hands. “Despite of what I thought, you didn’t lose anything of your intellect when you got yourself caught in Magnussen’s trap.”

“What does it have to do with this? And how the hell do you know what happened there?”

“Sherlock, please...” he sighed and his voice got almost normal for a while, deprived of melodious sound, too pronounced accent and change of tone that from time to time passed into falsetto. “I was watching him for years, bloody YEARS. I was watching him from a long distance and hated that man with all my heart. He was worse than me and absolutely disgusting. Even your brother has more charm and sexiness than that scum. When you killed him, you gave me the best Christmas gift I’ve ever had.”

“So that’s the reason...” Sherlock paused and laughed shortly. “That’s the reason you decided to make such a show in whole England, though you were hiding here. You have planned it but realized the whole ‘event’ sooner to save me from leaving Europe.”

“I’d die of boredom without you. Besides, it was about to be done anyway.”

“I’ve got a knight on a white horse.” the detective said and Moriarty smiled widely. „Who would think...”

“Every virgin has its knight who will be kneeling in front of her and defend her honour.” Moriarty snorted and moved forward, closer to Sherlock.

“Posthumous holidays changed you. Not so long ago you were good old-fashioned villain and now you are a hero saving his damsel in distress?”

“Bad boy and his weakness for the favourite princess. The princess treated another bad boy with an ounce of lead so she got a lovely rose for it.” Moriarty made a move imitating shooting to someone and after that, like he was giving flowers to Sherlock. “How’s the tea, Johnny Boy?” he shouted turning to the kitchen and grinned horrifyingly to Bill. “You lower the standards, Sherlock. I like the previous John much better. Loyal dog, growling when it was such a need. Not like your shaky, ineffectual wanna be.”

“It’s ready...” the younger man stammered, peeking at Sherlock and the fear in his voice completely outshone the resentment after Moriarty’s mocking. The detective rolled his eyes impatiently, though he felt a little bit sympathy for this hapless coward.

“Leave us alone” he said after few minutes, when Bill brought a tray with a kettle and two cups. “Go to the car, give us half an hour.” he added without any need of telling that after this time Bill should check if everything is okay and, whatever happens, should not call the police. Bill could be terrified but he wasn’t an idiot.

“Half an hour? Is this all you assigned for our date?” Moriarty asked, clearly offended.

“40 minutes. Go.” Sherlock snapped throwing him car keys and waited until Bill left the house.

“Charles Augustus Magnussen” he took up, pouring a tea into the cups when doors closed behind detective’s friend. „So how is it, Sherlock? Who did you prefer for your main enemy?”

“You both threatened John, you both tried to ruin my life, you both made me leave the country” detective listed like he was really wondering. „Difficult choice.”

“I saved you from an exile caused by him.”

“And you didn’t pee to my fireplace.”

“Oh, you gotta be kidding me!” Moriarty laughed sincerely.

“No.” Sherlock answered since he didn’t find that information amusing or shocking, by the way. “John was devastated. So... you won.”

“Funny you mentioned him twice. In a few seconds.” Moriarty said with a little bit of mocking or maybe his normal voice. Sherlock frowned and took his cup, expecting some more, not much serious hints. “How did you feel, my love, when you realized that he is your pressure point...”  as he heard those words, Sherlock squeezed his fingers. He didn’t expect THAT. “...while you’re not his?” Moriarty finished and his words made Sherlock’s hand shake. “Tell me, when did you realize it? In Appledore? Maybe earlier? No, if you knew it earlier, you wouldn’t take John to Magnussen’s.” he said thoughtfully and Sherlock decided not to disturb his deductions. “And perhaps, you wouldn’t even kill for him. The whole problem about the pressure points is the fact that when you finally find out what are your friends’ ones, you start to look at them differently. If you have same points, they can relate you... or fall you out. Discrepant ones are nothing serious but those unrequited... those must cause so, sooo much pain.”

“You know it from your own experience?” Sherlock asked when he pulled himself together after Moriarty’s words.

“I’m a pressure point of my pressure points so no. Not from my own.” he answered calmly, took his cup and drank his tea. “However relations between friends are the most interesting. And most dangerous as well. For friends and someone from the outside who tries to press them This is what I know from my own experience.”

“I’m listening.” detective said and leaned his chin on his joined hands. “Go on. Let’s talk about our common enemy who’s dead since few days. So... from the start. You kept yourself away from him for a long time but... you stopped for some reason.”

“The same as many people.” Moriarty shrugged indifferently. “He found out about one of my pressure points and tried to use it against me but when he realized that I’m a tough competition, he gave up. There was just too much to lose for him. Old times. After sweet Irene but long before our theatre on Barts roof.”

“And then you tried to cooperate with him but it didn’t go too well.” Sherlock pointed out and Moriarty nodded with approval.

“It’s more like he tried but it didn’t work because _I was a big spider with its huge web_ and he was a lonely asshole. His connection web was only in his head and he had absolutely no ability to draw people to himself or cooperate with anybody.” Moriarty took up but he didn’t bother explaining how it turned out that he and Magnussen got from blackmailer-victim relation to business connections. “He trusted no one. He didn’t assign any serious tasks to anybody. _Me, me, me._ He didn’t really care about anyone, because the knowledge, money and power caused by them were turning him on. Everyone knew nothing and people were only milking cows or servants, not useful to anything else. We both know that he couldn’t just ignore me for such a long time and that’s why, when he decided to put me in one of these groups, I started to operate.”

“When it was?”

“Riley. That damn idiot” he snorted with pity. “She was working for one of this scum newspaper at that time. He published all this bullshit that I made up, and she realized, when I started to suspect him, that something is wrong.” He moved his finger through the brim of his cup and for a moment got lost in his thoughts. “Mixing lies in the words of truth is the key of a success. I used it on you and Magnussen found out that he can do it other way as well.”

“Even in your biggest hoaxes about Richard Brook was a grain of truth.” Sherlock finished his thought. “And Magnussen found it out.”

“...another pressure point.” Moriarty said. “So I suspected all this and started to panic because that one was much better than the previous one. Remember, that time I was living with that stupid slut and played you, so at the very beginning I didn’t take it too seriously. I had huge plans, so beautiful and spectacular. You’d crawl from joy and kiss my feet for such fun I’d offer you. And he ruined it all because he was digging too deep and pushed too hard. I had no choice but back off.”

“So what was with these assassins?” Sherlock asked ignoring Moriarty’s words. Though they were kind of insulting, he felt some unhealthy excitement. “Why did you even go on that roof and played me till the end if you had such serious plans?”

“They were aiming to your friends and only your suicidal jump or my word could stop them.” he answered and silenced for a while, like he was thinking what and how to say what he was about to; maybe it was just a pose but it looked like he was wondering how much he could confess. “It’s the whole and 100% truth but, unfortunately, Magnussen knew about it because partially it was also his plan. I couldn’t back off because just before you came, I got a message that if you wouldn’t jump and your friends wouldn’t be shot, someone else would take their place. All my plans were ruined and I had to make a quick decision which back up way I will choose.”

“Magnussen wasn’t a murderer.” Sherlock protested as soon as Moriarty finished his remark. “He was the most disgusting creature I’ve ever met but he wasn’t able to get his hands dirty, his balls were too small for this. Whatever he told you, he wouldn’t hire paid killers.”

“He would, because, believe me, Magnussen really wanted to get rid of me since he knew I wasn’t just an ordinary criminal and much bigger ammunition was needed. But Sherlock... I just said the most important thing and you didn’t listen...” he said with a strange smile.

“You...” Sherlock stammered remembering all Moriarty’s words and realizing what was that about. “When you were going there, you didn’t intend to stop the snipers by my suicide. You thought I’ll say or do something that will make you stop them and on the last second he changed your plans so you couldn’t do this.”

“Pressure points...” the man confirmed, staring at his hands. “You have no idea how furious I was. I prepared everything and suddenly I got  the information I’ve to make you commit suicide and after that blow my head off. I was saved by the fact that, just like you, I had some different scenarios and all worked out to perfection. In such a critical situation, I had many options. As I was going on Barts roof, I knew that if something’s wrong, I’ll have to disappear so I got prepared. Thanks to this I can sit here, in front of you in one piece. When I shot, I still wasn’t sure if you’d jump as Magnussen wished and I was hoping that somehow you’d do something to make everyone believe you killed yourself. And no one would die. I’m glad you didn’t let me down.”

“So, all in all, _the Great Game_ started because of him.”

“No, don’t even try to think like this!” Moriarty said with outrage. “He wasn’t involved in our... yours and mine game. You were completely separated issues and his only participation in it was to make Riley gossip about few things. Remember what I said? I read it in the paper so it must be true. I needed a paper and I was in touch with him. Let’s say, we cooperated back then so I used this relation to my own interests. „

“You know it’s really hard to believe that for such a long time you treated me and Magnussen as the separated matters.” Sherlock said so convincingly that Moriarty didn’t notice a bluff.

“You can think whatever you want. What I said is true.” he answered with irritation. “Magnussen was the one who tried to connect everything, not me. I split myself on million parts and faces, he synthesized everything and changed it into something one-dimensional and boring. For me there was individually: you, him, Mycroft, my Janine and my precious points. He just related all of those and ruined it. Because some things, when you try to connect them, simply blow up.”

“ _My Janine_ ” Sherlock repeated with a slight irony. “This is the one of your mutual pressure points.”

“It’s so obvious that I don’t see any reason to make this a riddle.” he snorted. “And this is the worst part. I was about to disappear and she had to stick in this sum’s office, under observation. Oh, not straight away, obviously...” he specified when Sherlock frowned. “He enrolled her later. This whole time she wasn’t aware of the danger and for many months she didn’t know who Magnussen really was. When she found out that he hired her only because of a connection with me, it was too late to back off. The fact that she didn’t know any details and was pressed by him made escape even more impossible. You see... “Moriarty broke off and stay silence for few seconds. “Everything about him and us... things that she should know, she got from me, when I came back from the dead and stood on her doorstep.”

“You told me more?”

“Other part.”

“Why?”

“Because Magnussen’s case is finished. Because I can’t tell Janine everything, because I like to talk. And because I like _you_ ” he said and slanted his head squinting his eyes in such a way that many people could find it coquettish but in Moriarty’s performance it was kinda scary. “The case is finished. All we have to do is to bury it in his grave and strew it with sand. Now! Let’s forget about Magnussen. Now there’s just us, like it was supposed to be three years ago.”

“Just us.” Sherlock confirmed feeling how much it hurts, considering his relation with John. “So... what are we going to do with that?”

“That’s why I wanted to visit you, like Janine said. But you anticipate me by inviting yourself here.” he said laughing. “The second game, Sherlock. _Our_ second game. I’ll visit you soon and tell you everything. Just let me prepare the stage. Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to finish it by a drama on a roof.” Moriarty blinked and slowly got up without showing the signs that the meeting is over. “I’ll tell Janine you say ‘hi’.”

“Absolutely” Sherlock answered and shook Moriarty’s hand which shocked the criminal. His left hand twitched as detective saw once again the situation on Barts roof when he was shaking his hand just like now and a moment after Moriarty was bleeding on the ground. “You won’t tell me how did you do this, right?” he asked. Moriarty, associating this situation, laughed shortly.

“Magic trick. Maybe someday.”

***

 


	4. Brighton - 1

***

Sherlock was reclining on a back sit of their rented jeep, not answering Bill’s questions and staring through the window. When he came to the car, he gave Bill the keys and told to stop in the nearest hotel on the way to Brighton. And then he just got lost in his thoughts, analyzing every detail of his meeting with Moriarty. Everything that he heard that evening caused even more questions and doubts. He tried to infer every single word spoken by Moriarty, just to find out which of those was a lie or understatement that, on purpose, were supposed to make Sherlock draw wrong conclusions. His head was so full of thoughts that he almost felt it pulsing and he assumed that if he was a someone with migraine problems, his unpleasant aura would start right now.

When they finally found a slum-looking hotel, Sherlock just threw his coat and shoes off, fell on a bed, and, without caring about anything, he just stared at the ceiling. As Bill realized that his friend won’t be talking much at this moment, he left their room and detective was extremely thankful for that. When Sherlock was alone, everything was stabilizing and he finally could start to meticulously arrange in his Mind Palace what he found out. Detective was as careful and precise as rarely it was possible to do that.

Moriarty wanted to meet on Barts roof and tried to pull him into some kind of game, using blackmailing – pressure points, snipers aiming to John, ruined reputation and no field to take any measures, even with Mycroft’s help – a little bit of persuasion and manipulation. He didn’t know what it was supposed to mean but the criminal consultant said Sherlock would find it amusing and he should be _delighted_. It was supposed to be their _second game,_ and if Moriarty prepared it properly, no one would get hurt. And – and this really was just a supposition – just to have fun, Moriarty was ready to give up all this chaos caused by lying in papers, simply for the fact they could stay in England. He didn’t think they could „play together” on a continent or even further but Sherlock couldn’t find any prerequisites. Either way, Moriarty didn’t want him dead and the whole ending of their confrontation, double suicide, was just a result of Magnussen’s actions. But he actually didn’t care that time about Sherlock – or more directly, Mycroft – but it was all about Moriarty. Detective was just hit by a rebound.

He was almost 100% sure that if Moriarty didn’t do what Magnussen wanted him to, _Janine_ would be dead. It was just too obvious to even think about it. His unfortunate ex was the one he will take care about in the closest future at first place. Considering Moriarty’s allusions, they didn’t keep in touch that time, Janine wasn’t well informed about his criminal actions – at least she didn’t have a clue how extensive they were – and in this whole Richard Brook thing, she knew kinda different side of the story. Maybe she actually believed in that version with an actor, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, or perhaps she knew enough to realize that it’s a bigger issue so she should stay away from it if Jim – Sherlock was wondering if Janine was calling him by this name – didn’t let her know much about that matter. She found out that Moriarty is alive not more than a couple weeks ago, when she already lived in Sussex, her dirty stories about romance with famous detective were a little bit passé and a job under Magnussen became a history. Sherlock didn’t know when she realized about the connection between Jim and Magnussen. Maybe it was the truth that Moriarty was the one who told her about it, when he came to her, safe and _almost_ sound. But how did Janine know about his death? The press gave that time just a short announcement that Richard Brook _was missing_ after Sherlock’s suicide and the information that Brook was dead had never been published. When the investigation was finished, his name was clear and Richard Brook was officially named Moriarty. But that issue about if he’s dead-or-not was completely ignored. Maybe it was all Magnussen’s doing... he actually did have the whole press in his hands and he... well, it wasn’t obvious what exactly he knew. Or what version he was familiar with and if he informed Janine. And Sherlock didn’t know what Magnussen was about to do but it didn’t matter anymore.

What was official, however top secret, was the report that on Barts roof were blood and tissues of a man that was supposed to be Moriarty. Sherlock saw them with his own eyes, he read expertises that Mycroft gave him, with the signatures of those all experts and the results of genetic analyses. It was written there that the body lied on the roof not more than 15 minutes and was taken by unidentified people – characteristic blood marks, as if the body was pulling on the ground directly to exit. Definitely not like those left when someone wounded is carried by other men, or like Moriarty was walking by himself. But the scent was broken in one spot. No fingerprints on door handles on Barts roof, no footprints, no more blood on stairs and further. Because of obvious reason, Sherlock couldn’t check the place by himself, besides he was focused on hiding and working with his brother on breaking up Moriarty’s network. Mycroft said outright that one of his men took the body as the three suspect men were arrested near to Barts and  although it was nothing proven to them, he knew they were from _spider’s web_ and surely, they had something to do with hiding the body. Sherlock believed in his infallibility... or maybe just his version and didn’t try to dig any deeper. Again... he had more important things to do than wondering what those criminals wanted to do with a body of their guru.

Either way he made a mistake by believing in DNA and battle reports just because they were given to him by Mycroft. Sherlock himself was a proof that death can be faked if you have lots of money and proper people to help. Even Irene was able to pretend her own death without any bigger complications, so why would Moriarty have problem with it? He was far more intelligent and cleverer than she was, also he had a network of people that were able to do anything for him. The fact that _no_ body was found should be suspicious but... again, if Sherlock didn’t recognise Irene’s corpse, with Moriarty would be the same and what’s more, he didn’t have doubtful pleasure to see him as _much_ as it was with the famous _Woman._ As it turned out, the only reason why there was no body was the fact that Moriarty was in hurry so he didn’t have time to kill someone similar to him, _just in case._ Or perhaps he couldn’t put there corpse, but Sherlock didn’t find any explanation for such imperfection. Moriarty could just leave it somewhere in Barts and it would be done, right? Paying before it a group of pathologists and laboratory technicians isn’t such a problem. As the matter of fact, it was done in some way, because those reports couldn’t be 100% authentic if they misled someone like him, not mentioning Mycroft. Assuming of course that Mycroft didn’t actually know the truth – and if he did Sherlock was about to scratch his brother’s eyes out and make him eat them.

What was comforting, they weren’t the only ones who were fooled by this theatre. Every next minute he was more and more sure that Magnussen also got these reports and assumed Moriarty was dead. Or maybe he found forgers or somebody of his network and somehow made them tell the truth... And finally considered that criminal consultant, pretending to be dead somewhere abroad, isn’t dangerous anymore and he gave him up, keeping Janine close at the same time to have in his pocket Moriarty’s pressure point, if he was about to come back. He rejected the possibility that Moriarty and Magnussen were cooperating all the time and the suicide issue was their idea – Jim was sincerely happy that the other man was dead and his hatred and disgust were equally honest. He was a talented actor who put on so many different masks but when he really _felt something,_ he couldn’t just hide it. One thing that Sherlock needed to be explained when they will see each other again, why Moriarty didn’t assign anyone to kill Magnussen. It was obvious there  were some reasons... however Sherlock decided not to go blindly and when they will meet next time, he’ll just ask Jim. Meanwhile, he will go to Barts and rip Molly’s heart out if it turns out that she knew about Moriarty’s fake death and had something to do with that.

He stopped thinking about the future and came back on the hospital roof, trying to remember, probably for the hundredth time in his life, what happened there. Moriarty seemed to be even more insane that he usually was, amused, furious or agitated, proud and disappointed – from one to the other. That time Sherlock realized that the criminal had many personality disorders and it was crowned when, with tears in his eyes, he was thanking detective for _not-being_ ordinary. It all had one simple explanation: he was devastated, embittered and angry at the same time. He was nervous, pushed by the pressure that Janine will die if he makes any mistake. Back then, Sherlock felt the same way but as a stoic introvert with moments of eccentric reactions, he showed his emotions completely different than this emotionally frustrated, casual choleric individual. They may have been similar in some way but it didn’t have anything to do with temperament or reactions for stress.

It was no point in thinking about what Moriarty was saying that time. All of his words were parts of failed plans, completely destroyed by Magnussen, just a mumble with some, obviously, rational parts or other side. However, Sherlock, despite of his need of knowledge and analysing all things, was able to recognise failed case: it happened three years ago, but whatever, Moriarty had different plans about him right now and if it was possible to go back to that time with acquired information and experience, he wouldn’t talk the way he did before. Codes, angels, _our problem,_ the fall. Mumble. Lots of mumbling. Besides, even if it actually DID matter, there was one annoying thing: he never found out how to recognise when Moriarty was telling important things, when he was lying and making jokes. He wasn’t sure when he was wearing a mask and when was showing his real face. So even if he actually was able to turn back time, with his whole bloody knowledge, it would be a huge black hole in it: Moriarty himself was one, big unsolved riddle and Sherlock really doubted that he would properly decipher all their conversations.

Frustrating to the bounds of possibility.

Exciting like hell, so much that he was shaking while thinking about next meeting.

He smiled as he realized that since Moriarty showed himself to him, they will be _dancing_ again. And once again, he had someone who fascinated him, repulsed and attracted at the same time, someone so multidimensional and interesting; someone who, expecting his cousin-sister's lover, had so gentle, shy and almost innocent face. Someone who was terrified when he realized that he showed Sherlock his different face. And shocked by the fact that detective came to that house, of course, but mostly scared that he could have been deciphered by someone who was supposed to think that Moriarty was a psychopath with no conscience. He was afraid, he was actually afraid that Sherlock saw something that he wasn’t about to show him and this split second was a proof of it. It told Sherlock about Jim more than all criminal’s words. And even a moment when Moriarty confessed he has pressure points, many pressure points and Janine is one of them – who felt the same way towards him, what Magnussen was aware about.

Janine. Janine again.

He grinned and jumped of his bed, searching through his travel bag looking for cigarettes. When he finally found them, he slightly opened the window and smoked in delight, smiling all the time. Janine. He finally knew why she bought that lower-standard house and, as he was staring at distant Brighton lights, he was more and more confirmed, he’s right. His lovely ex lived here some time ago and the fondness of something brought her here once again, on this wilderness, near to the place where she spent her childhood. Where Jim must have lived as well. And Carl Powers who left this village few years ago, just to die in London. Sherlock knew why he didn’t find Moriarty in old school yearbooks from that period, when some time ago he came to Brighton, looking for connection of him and the young swimmer, after this whole action at swimming pool. Apparently Jim lived here only for a while, maybe was visiting Janine for holidays, maybe he didn’t go to school here; but SHE did and it was HER past that he was about to check, starting from primary school – because he was more than sure that she attended to the same one as Carl. He would curse himself right now for that he never listened to Janine when she was telling him boring stories about her friends from childhood, cities where she lived, favourite plays or school subjects. However there weren’t many mistakes that couldn’t be fixed. And this one could be repaired with extra benefit.

As Sherlock stubbed out his cigarette, he realized that in his thoughts he was calling Moriarty by his name. But it was more funny than terrifying for him.

***

Bill wasn’t happy about a disguise that Sherlock made him to put on but he didn’t argue. He was more silent since yesterday and didn’t like the fact that he was right about Moriarty. On the contrary – Bill didn’t even try to talk about it, all he wanted to do was to go back to London, to his slum, give himself to a drug addiction and forget about the fact he had that opportunity to meet the most famous criminal in England. Sherlock on the other hand, didn’t want to associate with sulky, scared kid with completely no desire for adventure and so that’s why, after they left small clothing shop with a Latin girl behind a counter, he took Bill to a café and bought two coffees to go for them. Afterwards Sherlock stopped their car in some gloomy park where, still sitting inside the jeep, he summarized his talk with Moriarty – that part Bill didn’t hear – and told him about conclusions he made. He just passed over some details that shouldn’t be important for Bill, like criminal’s bad physical condition and also Moriarty’s mocking about pressure points system between him and John.

A new riddle and disclosed secrets aroused Bill a little. He stopped being terrified and shaken like he was hearing sound of Moriarty’s name and now was standing in front of the door of closed school, somewhere on Brighton’s suburbs. The place where Carl Powers attended. He was wearing dark jeans, white shirt and long but not too elegant dark coat, just like Sherlock. They were supposed to pretend financial controllers, just in case if they met someone – detective showed him fake badges and search warrants for the financial irregularities in the archive – but it wasn’t much likely they’d have to use them. It was a holiday break and the building seemed to be empty, not counting a sleepy security worker, walking around and equally bored charwoman. Passing them wasn’t a problem, same as breaking the lock of a back door.

“What are we exactly looking for?” Bill finally asked, when Sherlock went straight to secretariats from where they could go to the basements and archives.

“Janine’s files. We can easily get to them by checking class photos from the time when she graduated. And after that... we’ll see.” Sherlock answered calmly and snorted when they went through a hall where were cases with photos of previous classes. He perfectly remembered when he was here few years ago, looking with no results for young Moriarty’s photos in the yearbooks of younger and older kids than Carl Powers.

“How can you be sure that...”

“I won’t offend you by explaining what is obvious.” Sherlock said and stopped in one spot. “Go to the end  of this hall. You’ll find there graduates from the ‘94, if I remember it properly. We will check it from the both sides of the hall and if there won’t be anything worth attention, we’ll check 5 other years.” he added, pointing right direction.

“Name?”

“Hawkins. But check the others as well because I’m not quite sure if this one isn’t fake... Or if Janine used her real one while she was attending this school.”

“You sure know well where everything is placed.” Bill said as he went through the hall and stopped next to right yearbooks.

“I was here to look for Moriarty some time ago. Class photos first and after that – breaking to archives.” Sherlock replied looking through the first cabinet. “Carl Powers” he specified hoping that his friend remembered that case and won’t be asking stupid questions.

“And you didn’t remember if she was here?” the younger man snorted with a little mock in his voice.

“You’re overestimating my skills” Sherlock mumbled. He just reached Carl’s class. The boy’s photo wasn’t like the others and it was partly covered by a black ribbon; it was something that Sherlock remembered too well because this boy was murdered when he was in the last class of primary school and although he didn’t graduate, he was placed in this yearbook. He stared for a while at unpleasant face and courageous eyes of the teenager. To be honest, Sherlock could easily imagine how someone like him could be cruel to a small, weird kid which Moriarty was for sure.

“Got it!” he heard Bill’s amused shout so he instantly run to him and looked at the photo from which little Janine smiled to him, staring at lens. It was her, he had no doubts. The same dark eyes with that characteristic sparkle and features. The name was also right, what surprised him a little. He looked at the date and frowned – she was just one year younger than him, while he thought the age difference between them seemed to be much bigger. But it wasn’t worth a longer consideration.

“Great. And now...” Sherlock took from his pocket a master key and nodded at door in the end of a hall.

“Secretariat?”

“Yes. Put these on.” he said and gave to Bill the latex gloves. Detective put them on as well, hiding his pair of leather ones to his pocket. He walked to the pointed direction at a fast pace and unlocked the door in few seconds.

Sherlock didn’t have much problems with finding the right archive and yearbook of graduates as well, because, how it turned out, that part of documents was relatively recently  properly arranged and signed. And so as a result after few minutes he had Janine’s files in his hands. He opened it quickly, looking through the certificates, photos, medical chart and other documents. The certificates of won contests, copy of birth one and her student card. He smiled with triumph when it turned out that she was born in Ireland and lived there for a while, what explained her accent and the fact that she started to attend this school when she was 6 already. Moriarty had to be a little bit older, but not more than 4 years. If they moved here from Ireland, it had to be both of them at the same time so – assuming that there weren’t just holidays visits – Jim would start his educations here since fourth or fifth grade. Sherlock counted everything quickly in his thoughts, somehow feeling that he actually _did_ attend this school, though he wasn’t on graduates list. Moriarty didn’t die in inexplicable circumstances like Carl so his photo wasn’t in showcase and there were no documents of him in students files.

“I need to find the files of students that attended this school but didn’t graduate... let’s say, two first grades from 1989 at first.” Sherlock told that to Bill who looked over his arm with interest. “We’re looking for Moriarty. Focus on every single student that looks suspicious to you, because the name will be fake for sure.”

“Do you know where those could be?”

“No idea.” he mumbled, looking around this huge, dusted place. The cupboards and bookshelves with files were hardly signed and if someone didn’t know the system... There weren’t big chances to find anything.

So they started blindly and almost half an hour passed until Sherlock found suspiciously looking drawer with files of students from 80’s who moved away and took their original documents; the papers were a little bit yellowed, like everything here, but not so dusted. And also no one arranged them neither alphabetically nor chronologically – it looked like someone was taking them in hurry and didn’t bother about proper putting back. He called Bill and they searched this drawer twice, making sure that others yearbooks in this bookcase were arranged properly. Someone was here few months ago and searched those files as well, but Sherlock couldn’t notice if that person found what he himself was looking for. Or maybe it was taken even before and the intruder threw it all away in frustration. It wasn’t hard to find out who it might have been.

“The registers...” Bill said shortly and detective looked at him like he got insane. „The registers are our last hope.”

“The registers” Sherlock repeated after him and slapped his own forehead, realizing how huge idiot he was. “Of course! The registers! Why didn’t you...” he silenced when Bill, a little bit frightened by his outburst, took a step back.

“It’s kinda obvious...”

“Not for someone who had his primary education at home.” Sherlock snorted angrily.

Finding the registers turned out to be less problematic than Janine’s files or searching through mysterious drawer with students documents who left the school before graduation. Though they were kept in closed cupboard on other room, all documents were perfectly described. In 1989, when Carl was killed, there were 9 classes of his year and 8 more of younger one. Even with the number of semesters, it wasn’t so much to search through.

“So... he had fake name and there are no photos in register. How are we supposed to find him?”

“Pay attention to every student with male name and good grades.” Sherlock said and took one of registers, looking at first semester and year younger than Carl.

He didn’t even have to leaf through because the list of students was a first thing that he saw after opening the register. And a boy named _James Hawkins_ could be the only one person. With his hands shaking, the detective looked through the register, confirming his own supposition – all good grades, except for sport classes. As he was sure what he had to look for, he found with Bill other registers of this group of students and when after few minutes they had those all in front of them, there were no doubts.

Moriarty attended this school for at least two years and he moved to another place at second semester of the last grade, it was all written down – something about 8-10 months after Carl’s death. He was a year younger than Powers, great student, causing no problems – no unfavourable notes from the teachers. But the remarks were signed to other students and only in the first register of a semester he found four notes about kids who were cruel to Jim. Nothing serious, typical mean behaviour of school kids, who found someone different and made him a scapegoat. And it sounded reliable – good grades, intelligence above the average, different accent... it’s more than it’s needed to be persecuted by other students. However the fact that when Moriarty was younger he had no gift for making friends was... shocking for Sherlock. Detective thought Jim could create his own, small network already in his younger years. Meanwhile, according to those registers (which were only a part of reality that happened that time) this was a vision of little Jim Sherlock never expected.

“Kids from other classes must hated him as well” he said quietly and closed the register, staring at the cover on which there was a sticker with a year and class number. „They laughed at him and oppressed Moriarty and Carl Powers must have been the worst of them. He had to...” he stopped for few seconds and started to speak again. “Let’s find registers of Carl’s last grade. In his files there was not even a word about it. I read it once... but here...” he pointed a cupboard from which they took files of Moriarty’s class. “...we can find something that wasn’t there.”

“Where shall we begin?”

“First and second semester. Look at the dates before May.” he said and when Bill was looking through other shelves, Sherlock once again opened Janine’s file and focused on her photo from a student card.

“Don’t you want...?” Bill wanted to give him two more registers that he just found but the detective only shook his head what made younger man frown in surprise.

“Just read all Carl’s notes and keep it to yourself.” he said putting down all documents they found. From time to time he peeked at Bill’s face whose eyes were getting bigger and bigger. Finally, the younger man closed these files and threw them away like they were burning him.

“You really should read those.” he stammered out but Sherlock only clamped his lips.

“I guess it’s something horrible but I don’t want to know what exactly it was.”

“You don’t...” Bill broke off in the middle of the sentence, too shocked because of Sherlock’s words. “After he did this, Powers was suspended for 3 weeks. He wasn’t expelled and they didn’t call the police just because he was a great swimmer and _he brought glory for the school._ ”

“And everything was hushed up not to destroy his future successful career.” Sherlock finished it with deadly voice, closing his eyes. He could easily imagine that situation; end of 80’s, provincialism so typical for such suburbs, hiding every scandalous thing behind the closet. Typical. Painfully typical.

“And Moriarty murdered him when he realized that no one will punish this little monster just as he deserves.” Bill continued and his voice wasn’t like before. Now he was talking almost emotionally and moved. But the reason was something different than his imaginary fears. “That’s why there was no word about it in official files. And even if it was, it would be deleted after Carl’s death to memorize him as a golden boy, who died tragically.” he finished with anger and sighed as he heavily sat down, putting the register on the others that Sherlock wanted to take; they didn’t mention it with even a word but they both knew he will take and read them once again. “Back in school I wasn’t much loved as well because I was such a freaky smartass. I suppose you know something about it since you couldn’t graduate other schools at home.”

“I perfectly know.”

“And the college... that’s was a nightmare, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t kill anybody but you know what...? Somehow I can’t condemn him anymore.” Sherlock only nodded on these words. “When you’ll read those...” Bill pointed at the registers. “Notice how long Moriarty was absent. October 1988. It’s just... look how long he was on sick leave.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This wasn’t the information he wanted to find by looking through those archives. To be honest, he just wanted to find his or Janine’s old address, be excited by a photo of young Moriarty, take it as a souvenir and go to the place where Jim was living as a child – how it turned out, only for two years. It was weird that he moved out while his cousin-sister stayed and graduated a school... Meanwhile he couldn’t find Moriarty’s address because his files simply disappeared, however he could assume that there will be something in Janine’s family neighbourhood. He squeezed his fingers on a folder with her documents and started to put unimportant files back to the cupboard. Bill joined him without saying anything and after few minutes the archive was the same as they found it. Obviously, except for the fact that registers of Jim, Carl Powers and Janine were taken.

“No, don’t you look at me like that.” Sherlock ordered as he seized Bill’s eyes, who looked like he was even more moved by their discovery than he should be. “There are plenty of kids oppressed at school but only the most pathological and dysfunctional ones are _murdering_ their butchers.”

“He was... what? Eight years old? He was just a child. Not a teenage psycho ruled by his hormones, who just walks into school with a gun and do a massacre.”

“Don’t even try to defend him.” Sherlock said coldly. “It’s Moriarty. I told you what he is capable of. You shouldn’t be so surprised that as a child he was able to kill in cold blood. It’s just the way he _is._ ”

“Yes. It’s just the way he is and you simply sit with him at the table, chatting while sipping tea like old friends...!”

“I’ve never said I’m normal.” Sherlock said with insincere smile, looking into Bill’s eyes provocatively. After a while the younger man just gave up, resigning from this discussion.

“So... now what?” he finally asked when they hastily went through the school hall to the exit.

“We’ll continue this sentimental trip.” Sherlock answered and gave him a phone with GPS turned on and the address from Janine’s files written down.

“Not far from here” Bill said and gasped in shock when detective threw him jeep keys. “I’m driving?”

“Yes and if I were you, I would stay quiet during those ten minutes of ride. I need to think.” he said squeezing his fingers even harder on stolen documents.

***

           

The  neighbourhood where Janine lived looked like a typical housing estate of one-family houses, not very rich but clean and well-preserved, provincial way. The streets were empty and the whole place was sunk in the heavy and sleepy atmosphere additionally increased by dampness and mist. Outside the house of Sherlock’s ex there were two dangerously looking dogs running but there were no owners – quick deduction: one week trip, alarms on, lowered, not usually used blinds, a teenage neighbour who was coming here to feed the dogs – Sherlock resigned from housebreaking. He didn’t have to be genius to realize that the house changed its owners a few times during last days; the repeatedly remade sign under letterbox pointed it, same as few more, equally meaningful details. So he considered that asking neighbours some questions will be a better idea and though he was close to go to the nearest house, eventually, because of Bill’s whining about a second breakfast, they went to small, cosy pub, only a turn away.

“When I was checking Janine’s past, I went back to the college only” Sherlock said, slowly stirring a sugar in his coffee with a spoon. When they came here, he didn’t want to order anything however now he thought some good, hot and sweet beverage was something he needed. Especially, if he used that moment to think loudly about some matters. “Something like Finances or Administration. It went even well, good grades she had. She was hired quickly, without any mysterious relations or problems. Just an ordinary 30-years old woman, with few relationships history, who, as I thought, accidentally got a job in Magnussen’s office.”

“Are you explaining yourself to me right now?” Bill asked, eating his junky salad which looked like it was a mix of vegetables leftovers from last week.

“It never occurred to me to check school certificates when I was looking through the documents in her house” he continued, ignoring Bill’s question. “And also, she wasn’t stupid enough to keep in London her childhood photos with Moriarty. The longer I think about those two, the more uncertain I am if she really just recently found out about his cooperation with Magnussen. She _really wasn’t stupid._ Moriarty is her pressure point. Janine had to know about his actions more than he was aware of it.”

“Or he just believed her...”

“I doubt it. It’s not easy to cheat this man.” Sherlock answered immediately but apparently Bill decided to play polemic.

“Janine _isn’t stupid_ ” he said “And she was able to cheat you so well that you had no idea they are siblings.”

“Half-siblings at the most or just cousins perhaps” Sherlock retorted. “Besides, he knows her better. I’m sure he’s able to see more _truth_ in her than I did.” he took a deep breath and took his phone that rang with SMS sound, third this hour.

“The doctor?”

“ _Mrs._ ” Sherlock replied as he realized that Mary wrote him all three messages. Bill just nodded and started to stare at his plate, picking the sprouts from his salad and putting them on a napkin just to squash them with a fork. Sherlock looked at him for a while with a kind of fascination  but finally focused on his own phone.

Three messages. Odd. Mary rather didn’t write him much. He didn’t really want to read them but the driven by curiosity, detective opened them chronologically.

_Sherlock, are you home? I want to come by and talk._

_Ok, I already know that you’re not there. Mrs Hudson told me. Anyway, write me back, it’s important._

_You can ignore my messages but Damn it!!! Call John and apologize him for whatever you said. He’s unbearable since you two got a fight and I can’t stand him anymore._

Sherlock grimaced reading the last message but he stopped himself from writing her back in strong words, what she should do if she is so tired of John’s sulking that she can’t stand him. Instead, he sent her short message _“Case. Don’t have time.”_ hid his phone to a pocket, tried to consider the subject has ended. But the truth was that even reminding about John, of which he didn’t think almost for 24 hours, made him completely disturbed and Moriarty’s words came back like a thunder. _How did you feel, my love, when you realized that he is your pressure point while you’re not his?_

He tried to come back to the discussion with Bill but the younger man started to play his food in disgusting ways so he lost his will to talk with him and share opinions. Or maybe this distraction caused by John got him lost in his own thoughts... or perhaps he simply couldn’t do anything right now. He drank a coffee, closed his eyes and suddenly opened them, staring at the wall vis-a-vis.

Exactly. How _did_ he feel back then? For real, being honest with himself?

Like he collided with a truck. That was the best description of his feelings.

Strange, unknown and a little bit disturbing emotions were swirling in him since months, maybe even since he returned after being dead for two years, after John’s hardly friendly welcome; he realized those are odd every time he tried to think about it. _Like_ s _omething was pinching him,_ yes, that’s a good comparison. It accompanied him all the time, teasing and tickling him. It squeezed him like pants that were supposed to be fitted but still something about them was definitely wrong. It itched him like a mosquito bite from before few hours – you can forget about it for some time until you scratch the bitten place.

When John was kidnapped and bonded under fire, Sherlock had a feeling that his own skin was burning; as he looked at his friend and Mary, so happy and careless, busy with each other or planning the wedding, he felt tingling from the unknown source, spreading all over his body, causing impaired balance, nervous ticks and insomnia. He couldn’t stay till the end of their wedding party because pretending indifference and normality was simply too exhausting and he reached the height of his capacities. He left even earlier than he planned and for three days didn’t leave his flat, afraid to meet some living person that would like to talk to him.

When he moved away from them while dating Janine, playing drugs and solving Magnussen’s case, he could say he felt a little bit better; no itchy-teasing symptoms without any rational explanation but...he had that strange feeling as if he was thirsty or hungry. Odd, because he didn’t consider such prosaic physiological needs as so intense. Like he forgot about something and it chased him, as he was standing a half step too close to draught. Like the whole reality was moved an inch further what made something wrong. And then John was drawing him out of this drug hollow, yelling at him and everything came back again to its place, continuum wasn’t rocking anymore, colours were intense once again. The shaking and tickling came back as well, even stronger when John was near to him.

When he was so close, Sherlock couldn’t think because the _right_ version of the world was too disturbing and uncomfortable. When John was away, it felt good until the moment when detective realized he actually is _away_ and this caused all those strange moves and draughts. But in this moving reality he was closer to his mind and intellect. Although because of John he felt like less of himself since _too_ long wherever he was, but at least he didn’t made him fall into pieces by accidental hands touch or moving his hair.

And then the truck slowly started to move. Unsuccessful breaking into Magnussen’s office showed Mary’s true face and made him spend too much wasted time in a hospital. John was confused by his own emotions, somewhere between blind love and rage at his wife, that time he was really bad companion for Sherlock’s convalescence. They didn’t take any cases because detective was too weak to run through the city, besides... he was thinking about the only one that became his obsession, more wasting than stimulating. He started to play with a _shark_ and – same as Moriarty – he failed.

The truck was moving faster and faster when Magnussen discovered his pressure points, didn’t fall for detective’s drug addiction, and saw (and he saw it even better than Sherlock) that the most precious point of Holmes was John. And the doctor’s most important and the only one, _just like Jim said_ , point was Mary, ex assassin, hypocritical, dangerous and unpredictable. Faster, faster and... BOOM! Irene, when she was in danger, looked for her phone like a mother is looking for her beloved child. John would be looking for Mary, his pregnant wife whom he forgave everything. Sherlock would be looking for John, with all doctor’s defects and unwanted reactions that Watson was causing. As long as he was in danger, Sherlock would do anything for him. He did. He actually _did,_ and for what? To get for that one, short and honestly meaningless visit in prison, calling God’s name in shock when helicopters were lighting them, shaking hands at the airport just after a stiff and unnatural conversation. And it was all done. After a head-on collision there are only ambulances, police and gnashing teeth.

No, he wasn’t blaming John, it wasn’t about the feeling of injustice, jealousy or disappointment, although someone would say it was. As the matter of fact, he somehow felt relief that John wasn’t experiencing all those nonsensical emotions, like he did, because the situation between him and John would become even more embarrassing than it already was. Moriarty was right about the one-sided relation between detective and his blogger however he wasn’t right when he said that reciprocation would be better. Jim himself had that reciprocation with Janine and as a result he had to disappear for even a longer time than Sherlock. And it wasn’t holidays for him, considering his current condition.

“Shezza, your phone” he heard Bill’s nervous whisper.

“What?”

“It’s ringing.” Bill hissed, looked at Sherlock’s pocket and then nodded at a couple of older people sitting next to them who were looking at him with condemnation.

“Mycroft” the detective said and smiled with satisfaction as he rejected the call and turned his phone off. He was aware of the fact it was awful and thinking about pressure points made him realize  it even more. He was his brother pressure point and... ignoring him with such a premeditation took a new meaning. If his own weakness messed with his head, was it an explanation for him to be so horrible for a person who... cared about him?

He tried to push these thoughts away, not to disturb his own mind with Mycroft’s doubtful feelings, but a smooth return to the lost subject was impossible. Pressure points. Janine and Moriarty. The case. Brighton’s suburbs. Old neighbourhood of those two. He looked around, deducting seen people – there weren’t much of them – and realized that sitting here is a waste of time because none of these people was perfect to make him or her confiding.

“Let’s go.” he suddenly jumped of his chair.

“I didn’t finish...”

“You can stay if you’re not interested in a little chat with an old neighbour of Mr and Mrs  Hawkins” Sherlock said, taking his coat slinging over back of a chair.

“It would take only two minutes...!” the younger man moaned but he quickly went after Sherlock who was already standing next to bar and nervously grumbling as he waited for a bill.

“It’s about two minutes too long. I just realized something.”

“And this would be...?” Bill asked with discouragement when they finally left a bar.

“How would you handle a pressure point that disturbs you?”

“I’d got high” he answered shrugging. “Actually did it few times.”

“Exactly.”

“And _this_ moved you so badly that we _have to_ go back to our investigation _right now_?”

“Yes, indeed. That’s what I’m about to do.” Sherlock replied and when Bill’s eyes became wider he looked at him like he was an idiot. “Drugs are like falling into your weakness on purpose and creating a new pressure point which has to destroy the one that disturbs you. It’s the same with any other stimulants, by the way. But I have my emergency pressure points and they won’t destroy my liver or mentality. So at this moment, _right now,_ I have to get high by one of them and you’ll help me.”

“Do I want to know what exactly is that pressure point?” Bill asked but Sherlock pretended he didn’t hear that question.

“I just have to find the right house, near to old Janine’s residence and you will pretend to be my brother. You don’t have to say anything, just nod if it’s necessary. I’ll take care of everyt...”

“God!” Bill suddenly shouted, stopping and taking two steps back. “You have some hidden sick perversions, right? And with your own brother! God... No, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. It’s just too...”

“Did I tell you before that when you’re stressed you become an amoeba?” Sherlock snapped disgusted with Bill’s suggestion. “No? So I’m telling you now.”

“It sounded like you...”

“ _Moriarty_ is my weakness, you moron! I have some problems with my concentration but when I’m busy with his case, I’m back in good shape and normality.”

“I rather doubt the last one...” Bill mumbled but Sherlock didn’t even try to comment it because he was too excited, thoughts about John flew away, replaced by fragments of Jim’s past that he had to collect and find missing puzzles. He rubbed his hands in excitement and quickly went back to Janine’s housing estate where, without any consideration, he knocked at the door of first house.

***

They lost 90 minutes. First, they compromised themselves in front of some teenage girl who was from south part of Europe and didn’t speak English at all, next – two young men who moved in recently and wanted to share an impression about this place and finally, some old man with persecution mania who got hysterical and threatened he will call the police. The fourth house turned out to be a little be better choice. There was a young couple living there. They met when they were kids and stayed here after marriage. The both knew a lot about the neighbours from houses in this area and though they didn’t remember things from before twenty five years, they easily believed in a story about journalists of Sussex Downs newspaper and a reportage about the history of this Brighton’s part. After a short chat they directed Sherlock and Bill to a ‘lovely old lady’ who was living almost in front of the Hawkins’ house.

The lady turned out to be not much older than fifty, so she was far from being an old one but for a couple of carefree kids who got married when they were twenty and moved to a place after one of its grandparents, she must have looked like older than coal. And she really was lovely and kind in some terrifying naive way, but it was promising enough for detective. When the lady saw two cold and drenched from a drizzle newcomers who came in lunch time, she opened her door widely and invited them inside, offering a tea.

“The Sussex Journal’s reporters” she said, putting two cups on a table in front of them, and those were first words after politeness they shared on the doorstep. “Mr Higgins already called me” she explained when the men looked at her in surprise. “He warned me you’re some couple of perverts” the lady added with a smile. “Enough with the jokes. I recognised you straight away, Mr Holmes. Now, I’m listening” she based her chin on her hand and narrowed her eyes. Her features  became more serious and she didn’t look like an older version of Molly with prettier mouth anymore.

“I came here because of Janine” Sherlock said with a shy smile and quickly peeked at Bill with a warning look because the younger man opened his mouth as he heard his unnatural innocent voice. “If you recognised me, I’m sure you read all her...”

“Mr Holmes, everyone here read this and I’m honestly shocked that no one noticed who you are” the lady interrupted and though she tried to make her tone cold, she failed. “What is this about? You came here to find something and take revenge on her, is that right?”

“I beg your pardon...?” he moaned with such a shock in his voice that he had to kick Bill under the table so the younger man didn’t give them away. “Oh, that! Ms...”

“Butler” she said coldly.

“Ms Butler. I’m here for Janine because I wanted to...” he smiled innocently “I wanted to make her a surprise. We had some misunderstandings about which, unfortunately, the whole England heard but we cleared this up. We even renewed our engagement on holiday... oh, this is the moment when a girl shows her hand with an engagement ring, right?” he laughed a little bit nervously and, pretending to be embarrassed, he started bending his fingers. “I’m not really good at this... you know, stuff.”

“Definitely” the lady laughed and the expression on her face showed that she was getting rid of her reserve and she actually believed in this fairy tale even though he didn’t have to try that hard. “I must say, I thought you’d be different.”

“I hear it all the time. And that I look taller in photos” he said; another shy smile, his eyes roving about the walls, playing with fingers. “Ms Butler, I came here because I’m making an album for Janine. With photos. All places important to her. Previous schools, houses, neighbourhoods. We are both so busy and we can’t find time to go somewhere together so I thought... I’ll collect all of this and put it together in album. To show her I’m doing my best. I really do.”

“But you don’t need to talk with neighbours to get photos, do you?”

“The problem is a fact that I’m trying to keep it in a secret so I couldn’t ask her for addresses. All I knew was a street’s name...” Sherlock said and bent his head with embarrassment which actually wasn’t fake. “And I wanted... I’m sure you understand me. I wanted to find here someone who knew her. Perhaps she had some favourite places when she was a child... or something. Anything. She didn’t talk much about this kind of things and I don’t even know where to start. The University was easier because I went there with her friend but here... well, uhm... I don’t know anybody. Now I’ve got you and Micky... oh, Ms Butler, it’s Micky, my brother. Micky, it’s Ms Butler... uhm...yes” he nervously giggled again, perfectly playing socially maladjusted, introverted and shy freak, who makes a fool of himself when he tries to get in touch with anybody. Although Janine would get furious if she found out, he thought such a kind of man would be much better for her than all those posh nouveaux riches she dated right now. But the most important thing was the fact that Ms Butler believed him and most likely considered that it was possible that Janine was with someone like him, since she knew her only as a child.

“So you’re saying that she didn’t tell you much about her childhood, is that right?” she sighed and her voice became a little bit nostalgic. The final proof he finally got her.

“Unfortunately... It’s not like I was asking about this all the time. I know she lived with her parents. And Jim. But he left and she moved away as well, actually, she doesn’t have close relations with her family. I didn’t even get to... well, yes... meet them.” Sherlock finished and it was a truth. He perfectly knew that Janine’s parents bought a small house in Scotland few years ago and stayed there while their daughter preferred life in London more than sentimental trips through the provinces.

“I don’t think this place is the best one if you want to make her a present.” Ms Butler said sadly. “Of course Aisha... Janine’s mother... got through this eventually. However life they sent here wasn’t the happiest time for her. That story with little Jimmy... horrible. Such a good boy and that tragedy. Aisha treated him like a real mother and when his biological... when that...” she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just... Aisha was crying here so many times when Jimmy’s real mother took him away from them. Janine experienced it badly as well, not mention Henry... They barely could save him after what happened, and that Irish lunatic just came here with an escort and took Jimmy just like that. Even now it’s hard for me to...” she shook her head and looked at Sherlock with glazed eyes. “I’m sorry for this breaking down but I feel really bad when I think about this. I’ll never forgive myself that I was just standing and doing nothing while I was perfectly aware what that woman was capable of.”

“What you’re telling me...” Sherlock had a big problem with getting rid of impatience from his tone. “Janine... didn’t mention it. I mean, Jim’s matter. She was a child after all and I think her parents didn’t tell her much.”

“And thank God!” Ms Butler shouted. “Janine was four when it happened so it’s obvious they didn’t tell her about it. It wouldn’t surprise me if she still knew only censored version. Especially because of the fact she was really close with Jimmy and considering her impulsiveness I’d be worried about her reaction... if she heard the whole story. But you know Janine better so...” she stopped talking for awhile and looked into Sherlock’s eyes. The curiosity in them was impossible to hide, Sherlock hardly controlled himself not to shake from excitement. “I suppose you didn’t hear about this and you want to know the whole story, don’t you, Mr Holmes?”

“I’d like to know everything about Janine.” he said or maybe stammered, trying not to give himself away by even a lip move. “I love her and whatever had influence on her life... is important to me as well. Please, tell me what happened here...”

“Not here. In Ireland. Almost thirty years ago...”

 

***


	5. Brighton - 2

***

Sherlock was leaving Brighton with his face pale green, crushed by a history he heard. A dull pulsing at his left temple, once again in a couple of days, reminded that he might have tendency to migraine. He really should talk about it with John however they had days of silence, besides Watson, understanding himself as a doctor and a friend, would ask some questions how did it happen that all of sudden Sherlock started to have headaches. And detective would have to lie because telling him about meeting with Moriarty and what he heard a couple hours ago was not an option. Bill, on the other hand, seemed to be paralysed by the story told by Ms Butler and totally absent so this time Sherlock was driving. It was the only solution if they didn’t want to end up crushed on some tree. They were about 1,5 hours away from the center of London, not counting the traffic jams, obviously, that could extend that time twice. He wasn’t sure if he trusted himself right now, behind the wheel and he had a feeling it would be better if they stopped at the nearest motel. However Sherlock wished to finally close the door behind himself on Baker Street and find himself in his Mind Palace. His wish for it was stronger than his common sense. As a result he was driving slowly but nervously and so there were few times when only a miracle saved them from a crash.

“Stop the car.” Bill demanded after something about 40 minutes. “Stop the car, smoke... and do... something.”

“A nicotine causes irregular pulse, blocks oxygen flow and, logically, the concentration...”

“So stop and look at the sky.” Bill moaned and sighed in relief when Sherlock started to brake and turned at the roadside. “How it was with this leaving house thing? _It’s a dangerous business going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to_ ” he said philosophically with a gloomy tone which made the detective look at him like he was insane. “It’s from... never mind. It’s just... shit, we didn’t plan to find out SUCH news.”

“You don’t say” Sherlock mumbled and, ignoring what he said just a while ago, he got out the car and wrenched a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He nervously lighted one of them and inhaled the smoke, leaned against their car and peeked at Bill who stood beside him after a while. “Ms Butler must have kept this for herself for years considering how emotionally she flew...”

“Is it surprising?”

“Not so much as it’s supposed to be. Besides, she didn’t tell us everything that could be interesting...”

“Interesting?” Bill stammered out, completely shocked. “Maybe for you, because, believe me, I’d rather not know. For God’s sake, when I think about it right now, Moriarty grown into quite an ordinary guy since...”

“... when he was seven he saw his wicked mother killing her boyfriend and two babies?” Sherlock finished almost indifferently which made Bill choke. “The weirdest thing in that story is the fact how it was possible that they released her and her parental rights were restored. No curator? Though that woman was dangerous and unstable, Henry’s struggles in courts gave nothing. That’s interesting. Ms Butler underestimated the connections that Moriarty’s family ha...”

“Shezza, I really don’t want to talk about it.” Bill interrupted turning on his heel. “You want to rationalize and look for another riddle? Fine. But don’t think I’ll do this as well. It’s too much for my nerves and stomach. If you intend to dig any deeper, I’m not going with you anywhere” he finished with a resentful voice and got into the car – this time in the back seat like he wanted to be as far from Sherlock as it was possible. The detective snorted angrily and inhaled deep with smoke. The doctors must have lied. He didn’t feel aroused, quite the contrary! The dose of nicotine calmed his broken mind down and made Ms Butler’s story, filled by emotional pauses, consist in one, logic whole.

Actually, Sherlock couldn’t say he didn’t expect something like that. He was aware of the fact that even only genes themselves could make a person dysfunctional and wicked, he and Mycroft were the best proof, though they had an usual childhood. But to create something like Moriarty, more was needed and the detective always knew about this but he didn’t want to think of it too much, afraid he will start to defend Jim – like Bill did it after reading what Carl Powers had done to Moriarty.

Because his companion was sulky, he wasn’t even about to discuss that matter with him. Sherlock considered that he has a moral right to ignore him as well. He looked how many cigarettes he had left and noticed it’s enough to take a few minutes break to segregate a story heard from old Moriarty’s neighbour. Important – memorize, mumble – delete.

It all started in a small village, not too far away from Dublin, before Jim was even born. His mother – Ms Butler didn’t even mention her name, defining her with many synonyms of _Irish lunatic_ – was dating Henry Hawkins only for few months, she got pregnant so they had a quick wedding just to get divorced before Jim was a year. The court assigned the child to her, what was typical; although she lived a party life, didn’t work and had a teen mentality, she was a mother after all. Henry got married again. With few years younger Aisha, who was from the second generation of the Middle East emigrants. When Janine was born, they left to Dublin and a supervision of this calm and rational scientist over his ex wife with mental disorders and son was restricted. Then the woman stopped to keep up appearances, started to date more and more suspicious and dangerous men and the child became a fifth wheel. In spite of that, her reaction was hysterical when Henry suggested taking Jim to Dublin.

Another part, this one preceding the family tragedy, Ms Butler literally sobbed and filled with so many unnecessary details so Sherlock deleted almost everything. Typical pathological  story, one of the thousands. Alcohol, bad company, knocked up – nobody knows with who, actually – unwanted twin pregnancy. Three neglected children in a place with never ending parties, alcohol, drugs and brawls. More than probable family violence – both towards to children and the mother’s current lovers and them towards her. One time it came to blows and a triple murder, details of which Ms Butler’s didn’t have a clue or just didn’t tell him. Sherlock deducted from some hints that during an alcoholic-drug fight both twins – 1,5 years old – were stabbed and the expertise -  completely bungle – didn’t show if the children were murdered by Jim’s mother or her current partner, a degenerate with a criminal record of a robbery and two attempts of a rape on juveniles. There was no possibility to know his version of that crime because when the children died, the woman went insane and shot a dozen bullets in her cohabitants head and chest. Then, completely losing control, she tried to kill Jim. The woman was totally drugged and she had to be pulled out her house in a straitjacket and her son – sent to a welfare first and after that, to his father.

Jim didn’t react on this situation like police psychologists expected him to. He was completely insensitive to the whole thing, like he wasn’t aware of a what happened and during the whole investigation he didn’t say a word about the things his mother did. Considering his age and possibility of trauma in the future, no one pressed him. The evidence however was univocal – he did see everything that happened in his house. And also that during few months before the murder, he was a victim of domestic violence. The teachers and neighbours must have known about it but nobody said a word to the police or social workers. Maybe they were blind or stupid, or Jim’s mother was from such an influential family that no one from that province dared to mess with them.

Henry tried to get to him for two years just to help his son return to _normality_ , Aisha treated him like her own child and little Janine adored Jim. Though their efforts of curing the traumatised child didn’t bring any spectacular effects, Jim slowly got used to their commonness. Sherlock however thought that it was some kind of defence mechanism that had nothing to do with what was happening in Moriarty’s head. As a result of many various situations about which – again! - Ms Butler didn’t say much two years after those occurrences, Henry and Aisha decided to burn all boats, sold their house in Dublin and moved to Brighton’s suburbs. The change of neighbourhood was supposed to help them and it really did; Henry got a great job at the University, Aisha pursued a small business activity in a city, the children didn’t make any trouble, the neighbours liked them, although, as Ms Butler said, they _were kinda weird on their freaky, Irish way._

“At the very beginning I had no idea that something was wrong with them” the woman said. “But when I got a little bit closer to Aisha, we were the same age after all, we both had small children and many things to talk about, I started to... notice that something wasn’t okay.  Not with her or Henry, God forbid! But Jim was such a strange kid. He was so quiet, unnaturally kind and calm and additionally... completely... emotionless. Jim seemed to live in his own world, he was smiling, nodding, he never argued and I can hardly remember if there was any situation when he raised his voice. And he couldn’t get along with the kids of the same age which was really depressing... my sons... I have two sons, Mark was a year older than Jim and Corey two years younger, tried to make friends with him. Jimmy however just... didn’t let them. Though he never stopped being nice and kind... sometimes he looked at them in some terrifying way, just... terrifying. I really can’t find any other word to describe it. The kids of the whole neighbourhood were simply afraid of him. Maybe not from the start but just after a year of their presence there was not even a single kid who wanted to get close to him and be his friend. The school was even worse. He had no friend there and somehow he made everyone, even teachers, acting weird. Like he was pulling out of them everything worst, some horrible qualities, hidden deep inside, and then... God, I don’t even know how to explain it! He was drawing those qualities to himself. There was always something with him, I can’t remember a month when he didn’t get into a fight but no one knew why it happened. More than ten times Jim went back home with bruises, he had broken arm twice and one time... at the beginning of the Year 5... he stayed at school for a night and Aisha never told me what exactly happened but he ended up in a hospital and didn’t go outside for a month. Aisha... I really tried to talk to her but she was just closing her eyes, not able to confess anything. Neither then nor later.

“And there weren’t any... gossips?” Sherlock interrupted but Ms Butler just shook her head.

“The school suppressed everything. It was a nasty story. It had to be. But all workers just kept quiet.” She silenced for a while and after that started to tell about Janine who was completely opposite to Jimmy but after few minutes she stopped talking, squeezing her fingers on the tabletop like she wanted to tell something more but wasn’t sure if she could. „I still can’t believe that a calm and quiet child like Jimmy could cause such a mess” she finally threw those words out. “Because it didn’t really look like he was a weak scapegoat that couldn’t handle his situation. The more I knew him, the more I felt on myself, he just aroused aggression. Aisha was terrified... We were friends that time so I knew what happened in Ireland. I tried, I _really_ tried not to judge him. However... there were moments when I was looking at him and didn’t see a dysfunctional and miserable boy but a little monster that was amused by the fact he’s able to make people do horrible things, even if he was a victim...” she pressed her hand to her mouth as in her eyes Sherlock saw a shade of fear like only saying these words could have some evil forces. “I’ll never forget that situation...” Ms Butler whispered. “It was just few weeks before he was taken from here. I was walking to my house when I saw it from the distance... here, just round the corner... the three of some older boys were surrounding Jimmy, obviously wanting to do something to him. It was too long distance for me to hear anything but in one moment Jim said few words, considering moves of his lips, and looked straight at me and smiled in such horrifying way... It gives me the shivers every time I think about it. And you know what, Mr Holmes? They didn’t even notice me but it was one second when they simply vanished because when Jimmy spoke to them there was sudden change of strengths. Like he was the one who rules them, and all three of them, although they were bigger than him, couldn’t even touch Jim. I was thinking for a long time that maybe I got confused, maybe he didn’t smile at me like an insane person because just a while after, once again, he was a sweet, shy child that helps me carrying my bags, lower his eyes and never raise his voice.”

“When did you notice for the very first time that Jim... could do such things? Because you couldn’t realize it just like that, despite of hearing what your sons were saying” the detective asked playing with great difficulty Janine’s fiancé.

“Oh... of course. Obviously, I didn’t see it at the very beginning. Actually, it started to get really weird after this accident at school, when he was sick for such a long time... and after few months I was more and more sure.”

“Few months? So... Spring?”

“Spring. May... June maybe” she answered quietly and flew with her thoughts far away, without realizing that Sherlock’s face changed and he wasn’t a nervous, shy freak anymore. He wasn’t pretending now. He was completely focused, didn’t play a theatre, he _was investigating._

“Please, tell me about this situation with his mother. When she took him from here” he said and Ms Butler hemmed at first and then took a tissue.

“I’ll never forgive myself that I did nothing” she said and Sherlock had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. He patiently listened to a long, peculiar, full of regret confession that was caused by hidden pangs of conscience.

Ms Butler was at Hawkins’ when at the beginning of December 1989 Moriarty’s mother appeared there. The woman came with three suspicious guys and one of them was so like her that he must have been her relative. She was calm and confident, completely sober and didn’t seem to be a lunatic, although she spent last years in psychiatric hospital. She threw a writ and some other documents on a table and said that she’s taking her son. She added they can let her do that voluntary or she will talk with them in some different way. It became nervously and suddenly a fight had started but Ms Butler couldn’t describe it reliably. It was sure that Henry tried to protest but he was  knocked out by one of his ex wife thugs, Aisha on the other hand, who didn’t look well and had first symptoms of depression, simply passed out. Meanwhile, decoyed by screams, Jim and Janine came from upstairs. She looked like she didn’t have a clue what’s going on but Moriarty had to be aware of the situation however he didn’t show any emotions by even blinking his eyes.

“He didn’t protest in any way. Just quickly and obediently packed his things, hugged a crying Janine for a while and when he was saying goodbye to Henry...” Ms Butler stammered. “Mr Holmes, I was terrified back then, just embracing my half-conscious friend while three guys with guns were walking around the living room so I must have misheard but...” she took a deep breath. “Jim said something like... I really had to misunderstood...”

“What did he say?”

“ _I’ll be okay. And she’ll regret she was ever born_.”

“And then he smiled for a second this way that terrified you just to put his emotionless mask on a while after and go after his mother and those guys so humbled like he was going for decapitating and simply gave up” Sherlock finished for her and Ms Butler only nodded.

She was telling him about next years but not too chronologically, focusing on Aisha who, after Jim was taken, had a really serious breakdown and Ms Butler – carrying a late pregnancy with her only daughter – was with her all the time. The Hawkins family tried to put themselves together but only after 1,5 years, when 13-years old Jim, looking like he was fine, visited them, they resigned  to what happened. From that time until the moment when they decided to move to the capital, he visited them twice a year. A week in Summer and few days for Christmas. Ms Butler couldn’t say much about him but Sherlock thought it was rather _not wanting, than not remembering._ She was talking for awhile about battles that Henry fought in a family court but it was totally incoherent and deprived of details. After that she told him about their moving to London and again about Aisha’s depression. It was obvious that they won’t find out about more details of Moriarty’s past and Sherlock was just about to end this meeting when Bill asked a question and it was the first time when he said something till a moment when they came into Ms Butler’s house.

“Do you still keep in touch with them?”

“Just sending cards for Christmas” she sighed with sadness in her voice. “When they lived in London, I visited them few times but since they moved to Scotland we are not that close anymore. I don’t blame them, it’s hard to keep in touch if such a long distance is between us.”

“When was the last time when you saw them?” Sherlock asked this time.

“Fifteen years ago...? No, twelve maybe. Janine was already studying, and they went north just as she started to work. But I met with Janine and Jim in Spring 2009.” she added after consideration. “I remember because my first granddaughter was born that time... It wasn’t planned, we just accidentally met each other when they came here. I hardly recognised them.” She smiled to her memories and put away crumpled tissue. “Janine hugged me like I was her own aunt. We talked for maybe 10 minutes. Honestly, I don’t even remember about what.”

“And Jim?”

“You are interested in him more than in Janine” the woman laughed.

“I haven’t that pleasure to meet him yet” he quickly answered and Ms Butler nodded her head like it was satisfactory explanation.

“I don’t know what to tell you about him. He was a strange child but back then he seemed to be totally ordinary. I have a vague recollection of that Janine told me he’s working at some University, I don’t even remember where exactly. He was a great student so I wasn’t surprised. Jim didn’t talk much and so easily blended into a crowd that I can hardly remember his face... Oh, Janine had high heels so he was shorter but that’s the only thing I can remember of his look. And also the fact that I was wondering...” she got lost in her thoughts for a second. “How this could happen that someone so _invisible_ was able to terrify me by his weird smile or words, that were only my imagination.”

***

The further trip to London went without any excesses. Sherlock dropped Bill off near to younger man’s flat, returned a jeep to Coretec Cars and walked to his own apartment on Baker Street, since it was only few streets away. He smoked two cigarettes on the way, calmly and without any stress – as they were in Sussex he provided himself with a whole box and it was laying on the bottom of his suitcase. He planned to manage them by hiding the packets in the weirdest places in his flat. There were lots of new ideas in his head, planned for the whole week. He was about to start by looking for Moriarty’s father in the Internet. He knew his real name, besides the group has narrowed to University lecturers – because that was what Ms Butler must have had on her mind when she mentioned that man few times. Henry Hawkins wasn’t an unusual combination of names however Sherlock was about to search only in few places that included technical universities or faculties of exact sciences so he didn’t expect much problems.

What next? Dublin’s criminal chronicles from before thirty years, where he simply _had to find_ anything about the massacre that Jim’s mother and stepfather did. He intended to search it through all over again, from the start if it will be needed. From thread to a ball he’ll get to the woman that was the key of the only criminal consultant’s character. This whole branch of his family had to be a bunch of leading in this part of Ireland individuals thus he had to check them if somebody of this group has any connection with Jim’s network. He was so anxious to gather all those information, go where Moriarty’s mother was and see her by his own eyes to find out what kind of woman she was. And from Ireland he could go straight ahead to Scotland and entertain himself with another search – this time to the people that with their love and trials of healing full of holes psyche created Moriarty’s the other face. This sweet and gentle one, reserved only for Janine. This one that enchanted Molly, blinded Kitty Riley and convinced half of England that Sherlock was a fraud.

Somewhere between brilliant criminal and quiet man that twists women round his little finger, there were many different faces to which Sherlock didn’t pay attention before. The fact he was hired in Barts as an IT worker was obvious, same as his story of _actual_ reading fairy tales which could be bought on closed, fake Richard’s Brook site. He pretended to be a cabman, was able to break into almost everywhere, had enough courage to work with Magnussen – which face did Moriarty show to THAT man, by the way? And what Ms Butler said that not more than 5 years ago he _worked at university._ Sherlock planned to look through the whole history of James Hawkins, obviously, but he had a supposition bordering on a certainty that the trace after someone called James Hawkins will stop very quickly. Naturally, he had to study in Ireland for some time where he lived with his mother so Sherlock was about to search for his secondary and high school... and it was more than obvious that he still was a _Hawkins_ because there was no reason to hide his own identity that time. All in all, Moriarty frankly visited his father and there had to be some archival documents in courts pertaining the case of giving custody of the child. Jim had to be James Hawkins at least to come of age. There was no other possibility. Even if later such a man simply vanished, there still was a period of teenaged Moriarty when some weird things could have happen as well. How Sherlock couldn’t consider this if Jim killed when he was ten?

As he was walking to his flat, his head was full of plans or maybe schedule of  an investigation. He didn’t expect Jim to call him in a few days or weeks, because though he clearly announced himself as they talked in Janine’s house, Moriarty suggested that he has to prepare himself. It could take a longer time. Sherlock during that time decided to mark the pack of cards, put some aces in his sleeve and jokers in a pocket. Moriarty never played fair and so planned he.

Before he even pressed door handle, Sherlock realized that he had a visitor. He grimaced, for a while wanted to turn on his heel and hide somewhere where Mycroft wouldn’t dare look for him however he gave up this idea. The talk with his brother was unavoidable. Sherlock had to lie a lot and he couldn’t just put this off interminably because he ignored him definitely too long after _saving_ Mycroft from Moriarty’s bomb in Savoy Hotel and they didn’t have an opportunity to discuss it even by phone call. Detective took a deep breath and made himself to look as neutral and bored as it was possible. Few seconds later he was dragging himself through the stairs and opening door of his flat.

“Hello, brother mine” Mycroft said instantly and put away a newspaper. “You made me wait  a little bit too long.”

“Didn’t expect a guest so I wasn’t in hurry” Sherlock answered and threw his coat on John’s chair that he brought here when it was not enough place for his New Year’s Eve visitors. He planned to drag it back to attic... or throw away perhaps. He drove away this thought and fell on the couch, staring at the ceiling, not honouring Mycroft even with his glance.

“Why didn’t you take a cab when you were coming back from a rental shop? It’s so unlike you.”

“I went for a walk to delight in the beautiful weather” he answered, not bothering to ask Mycroft how did he know about rented jeep. The man however seemed to read his mind because he smirked in one second.

“All cars with a grade higher than Yaris in Coretec Cars have GPS installed” he said looking at his nails. “And after your trip to Baskerville I’m informed about each single car you rent in that place. What were you looking for in Sussex, Sherlock?”

“Thank you for the update. Next time I’ll rent somewhere else.”

“I have accesses _everywhere._ ”

“Like it was surprising.”

“Don’t change the subject. _What were you doing there?_ ” Mycroft asked with emphasis. “I’ll send my men to check all places that you visited, if you won’t tell me.”

“Good luck.” Sherlock snorted like he was amused. He was sure that Jim already left Janine’s house so Mycroft’s trip through that trace would lead him only to Janine. Perhaps to Carl Powers, if he had some luck.

“Does it even have something to do with a case?”

“How do you think?”

“Sherlock!” the man hissed, getting more and more irritated. “What did you find out? You were at that cute girl’s house but before that you had a trip through the whole south England.”

“You did your homework. Well done.”

“Were you looking for her? If you say ‘how do you think?’, I’ll confiscate your whole supply of cigarettes that you have in your suitcase” he threatened and it was enough for Sherlock to bite his own tongue. “Why didn’t you ask me or John for her address?”

“It would be too easy. Besides, the trip was so enlightening.”

“I’ll ask once more then: what were you looking for? What Janine had to do with...”

“Mycroft, we can end this conversation right now because I won’t tell you anything until my investigation is complete, or we can keep sharing that malice. You perfectly know that I won’t give you any details of my research until it’s done so you’re just wasting your time.”

“So you admit that this all show had something to do with Janine?”

“It’s connected to messages that so-called-Moriarty was sending to you and me.” Sherlock snapped paralysed by his brother’s persistence; if he wasn’t active in politics, he would be a successful trader or insurance agent because it was simply impossible to get rid of him. “Just like you said, someone’s pretending to be him, creating new riddles. Janine’s house in Sussex was a prompt and Savoy Hotel – an answer.”

“How...?”

“Someone knew about my relationship with her.” Sherlock continued, saying everything that he had on his mind right now. “He recorded an odd video in front of her house and uploaded it. I recognised a code from information boards. The code leaded me to Savoy Hotel. I let you know, you evacuated your government friends and became a hero. End of story. I thought I’ll find something in Janine’s house but I was wrong.”

“Oh... and after that, just for fun, you went to Carl’s Powers school and neighbourhood where he lived?” Sherlock smiled widely as he heard those words. No, he had no idea that Carl’s house was so near to Moriarty’s. It must have been different street... He would connect that one where Hawkins lived, that’s for sure... This explained a lot. “Back to the point, brother mine. If I was John, perhaps I’d believe in that story. Point for you, it sounded really believably. I want to know what were you looking for.”

“This is the only version you’ll get.” Sherlock said. “And if you send there any of your men, you’ll mess up everything I achieved because the information about government agents walking through that place will reach proper ears, I assure you.”

“Do you think I’ll sit quietly, waiting humbly until you finish your sightseeing trips? I am pressured, Sherlock! You stayed in the country so you could find out what’s going on with this Moriarty show and dispose that man as soon as possible!”

“And if I fail then what? You’ll send me back on the East again?” he asked indifferently and smiled in his thought as his brother got paled. He decided to continue that subject, just to find out _how precious_ he was for Mycroft. And, obviously, for pure sadistic pleasure. “What would mummy say if you told her after half a year that little Sherly died because of your negligence? I wonder, by the way... would you raise me a new memorial? The old one is too plain, you can do better.”

“Stop it.”

“You wouldn’t send me on that mission. You’d do anything to cut my trip this time and I’m almost sure that if this Moriarty show didn’t happen you’d find some way to get me out of this. You simply couldn’t have stand the thought that something might happen to me” he said and turned his head to look at his brother; Mycroft was pale, clenching his fists in impotent rage and with his whole pose he was showing that Sherlock was right, he hit his tender spot. “Magnussen was right. I am your pressure point, maybe the only one. You’d do anything to protect me. When you got me out from Serbia, you fought that thought, that’s why you let them torture me for _such a long time,_ just to persuade yourself you don’t care that your little junky brother is tormented. To be honest, you’re the first person I should accuse of that Moriarty theatre because you were the only one who had some business in it and was able to do such thing.” He smiled mockingly as Mycroft stood up with a sepulchral face, taking his umbrella. “Oh, did I hit your tender spot? It was too easy.”

“Goodbye, Sherlock.” Mycroft hissed, actually about to leave. “Let me know when you find out something you’d like to tell me, something interesting enough that I could feed MI6 with it.”

“I surely will.” Sherlock answered, watching with satisfaction as Mycroft was leaving. However before he reached the door, detective realized that, before he found out about Moriarty’s past, there actually was something that he wanted to talk about with his brother. “Mycroft, one more thing.” he said loudly, getting up from his couch and taking a step towards him.

“I’m listening” the man answered and turned to Sherlock; he managed to deal with all those emotions and right now his face was saying actually nothing.

“The reports concerning Moriarty’s death. Who signed them?”

“The freelance experts that I checked myself.”

“And you are 100% sure that...”

“You didn’t read carefully, Sherlock. All of those were saying what happened: Moriarty was dragged through the Barts roof to exit. His blood and _parts of brain_ were there. The trace stopped in this spot and we have only one explanation: the people that took him from there did everything to remove anything that could lead us where they dragged him. Nothing was found, no gun or shells. We arrested near to Barts three men that were connected to him but we couldn’t pull anything from them about this particular case. Although each of them cooperated with Moriarty, what was proven.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were released and I ordered to spy on them because I thought maybe they’ll lead us somewhere. However, how it turned out, after Moriarty’s death everyone returned to living as exemplary citizens so it was nothing to accuse them of.”

“Are you still watching them?”

“Not as much as before but yes.”

“Great. I want their files, even basic data” Sherlock demanded and Mycroft only nodded his head but without moving from his spot; he had to know that’s not everything. “With what were you comparing tissues from the roof?”

“DNA taken during his trial. No doubts, it was the same person.”

“Who analysed and confirmed them?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Mycroft answered and lightly tossed his umbrella so it landed on his bent forearm. “Molly Hooper.”

           

***

Due to the late hour, there was no point in going to Barts and Sherlock didn’t want to visit Molly in her flat – too much risk that she’ll be there with her boyfriend what would made making her speak more difficult. If he didn’t have the other interesting things to do, like searching through the Internet for Moriarty’s parents, maybe he’d go to her place, however it could wait for now. If there was anything that she forged three years ago, oh well. It’s already been done and Sherlock, when he thought about it, preferred to see his nemesis as walking freely challenge than lying corpse or carefully guarded prisoner. If someone didn’t help Moriarty with faking his own death, he’d be probably dead right now. Or, naturally, serve a long sentence.

The fact that Moriarty was alive and well, gladded Sherlock too much to be busy with Molly’s probable lies and though he’d feel personally touched if it turned out that she helped both of them and didn’t say a word, he didn’t intend to oppress her that much. Even if he had cruel plans towards her at first.

Sherlock gave up Molly’s matter for now. He unpacked his suitcase and took a long bath, smoking a cigarette and staring as the smoke was soaring under a ceiling. There were too many things he could think about to be in hurry with solving the other riddles. He was hanging about his apartment, drinking a tea, lying on a couch wearing only a bathrobe, staring at ceiling, smoking again. He reconstructed in his mind Ms Butler’s story, while taking stolen registers of Moriarty. He was opening them and closing, reading the other students notes again and again. Now was the moment when he had time to feel this situation a little bit stronger and, after adding the story about a period when Jim spent time with his father and stepmother in Brighton, finally became a consistent whole.

His thoughts swam with alive stream, he created connections and built a theory on them. The conclusions became logic, unambiguous, leaving nothing to doubt. Moriarty came to Brighton as a traumatized, calm child that was perfectly aware of that he is damaged and weird. Jim tried to create a view of normality for his father and stepmother but he just started to learn how to use his multidimensional, completed masks and it wasn’t always a success. During the first months of school he became a victim of violence and mocking by the other kids, however none of these described situation seemed to be really severe. Maybe it wasn’t a time when he started to check how far people can go when they are pressed and he didn’t want to get in the trouble... Or maybe he started slowly. He was only 9 or 10 and in case of any other kid it would sound ridiculous; Sherlock however was the _Sherlock_ , he knew they’re like each other and he knew from his own experience, that when it’s all about geniuses, an age isn’t an obstacle for departure from the common norms. All in all, he got interested in Carl’s Powers case when he was 8. If he was able to play detective at this age, why wouldn’t Moriarty try to test his manipulation skills, create masks and mess with people's minds by his tricks?

As he was chronologically looking through _James Hawkins_ class registers, he realized without any problems that jibes became more serious. At the end of a year, some two kids, with help of someone older, mentioned in notes by name, broke his arm in three spots and when he returned with his hand in plaster after few days of medical sick leave, he got into a fight that ended with sprained ankle and lots of bruises. What was more interesting, next to notes about Moriarty being a victim, there were more and more about hurt kids. Could it be possible that back then he was able to manipulate other people to hurt the others? Yes, indeed. The descriptions could be laconic but Sherlock noticed a pattern. Calm, easy to get along children started to act strange. An audacious, kind girl suddenly attacks the other one and tears off both of her earrings. The second one cuts her friend long to the waist plaits. Childish behaviour, of course; it was obvious that he couldn’t manoeuvre anyone to a murder at this age, like he did it years later with an incurably ill cabman.

The next grade began calmly and from the end of September till the beginning of November there wasn’t any note in the registers. Sherlock peeked at the register of Carl Powers and realised that he will have to read it to check what’s in it... however he decided to put it off until later. He knew that the result of those events was long absence of Jim and that caused – how it turns out – the fact that his class returned to calm functioning. And then, in the middle of November... Sherlock opened his eyes widely. More and more brutal behaviour of kids. Not so frequent but definitely worse than before. And it was only a part of what happened back in school because not every situation was noticed by the teachers. Not everything was...

...noticed. Exactly. Until Moriarty left school the notes became more and more rare and when Carl Powers died, there wasn’t any serious looking accident. However Ms Butler distinctly  said that kids were more afraid of Jim, that he was getting into fights, brought a chaos and _somewhere between May and June she started to notice it more clearly._ It wasn’t written in registers but people simply knew something was wrong. They just didn’t _see_ what it was. They didn’t have any proof, they were looking but not seeing, didn’t try to find the offenders and didn’t connect them with the source. Moriarty was learning how to conspire this way, that no _authorities_ could see him. The teachers were for him something that police was right now and... how characteristic it was, how amusing and terrifying at the same time...! The knowledge from the books wasn’t the only thing that Jim absorbed like a sponge – his grades were the proof – because the sociological and criminal  were the most important skills he mastered back then. This and the awareness of the fact how exciting the perfect crime might be, planned from the very beginning, considered as an accident and... committed in cold blood.

Sherlock stood up and took Carl’s Powers register. He was just holding it in his hands for a while and finally opened it on the first page. He looked at crossed name – perhaps only for the teachers so they won’t read it loudly by mistake and traumatise children, enough terrified by the tragic death of their friend. He moved some pages with the grades until he reached the part with notes but before he started to read, he suddenly closed the register, changing his mind. Did he really want to find out what pushed a ten years old kid to murder the other child from a laconic note? The answer was trivially simple. He guessed, because it was kinda obvious, that Carl left Jim somewhere dark for the whole night and as a result, something serious happened to the younger boy. Maybe he beat him up, tied up and gagged, he did it in some humiliating way, for sure. _He laughed at me so I made him stop._

No, he won’t spoil a surprise with those bare facts. He wanted to hear it straight from Moriarty. He wanted to see how his face changes or the difficulty that cost him keeping his mask on. He wanted to see him burst or falling into pieces. He wanted to see him giggling while his eyes are full of tears from hysterical laugh.

Before he managed to change his mind, he tore few pages out, crumpled, threw them to a fireplace, set them on fire and added few scraps of wood. He stared into the fire and when it became strong enough, Sherlock threw a register to the grate, watching as flames were consuming it, until there was only an ash left.

***


	6. The Signs

***

The last thing he did that day was getting rid of Carl’s Powers register. Though he was about to surf the Internet all night long, sometime around midnight he went to bed and slept heavily for almost 4 hours, what was a great achievement for him, by the way. He woke up, rested and full of energy enough to play the violin for an hour, walking through his apartment, wearing only a loosely tied bathrobe. After that he dug out of the fridge the last yoghurt that wasn’t expired and, with a cup of coffee, he sat in front of his laptop.

As he turned his computer on, he didn’t really know where to start. He planned before that the first thing to do would be checking Henry Hawkins and then massacre in Jim’s house, next - his mother and her family; however in his mailbox there was some secured files from Mycroft waiting for him, concerned Moriarty’s people, arrested in Barts – interesting that his brother didn’t deliver them in person. Seems like Sherlock’s comment about Mycroft’s pressure point was clear enough that the man didn’t want to look at his younger brother for now. Another thing – someone spammed the hell out of the forum on his website. So much that you couldn’t find a discussion that didn’t include photos of him wearing his hunting hat, attached by the obsessive amount of comments about the loveliness of the famous detective. Completely embarrassed, he temporarily blocked the access to his forum so no one would read this nonsense and decided to look it through later just to delete all the posts.

Besides, on the BBC website finally appeared the official information about Magnussen’s death; previously there was just short news that some unknown perpetrators broke into the house of the magnate of British press and Magnussen himself got attacked and shot. Now it was written straight that a _thorough investigation_ showed it was a robbery, some valuable antiques and many of souvenir valuables were stolen. _We give sincere condolences to a family immersed in pain_. Sherlock read the article twice, laughing from time to time over Mycroft’s and his government friends inventiveness. A thorough investigation! That was the best. There was _no_ investigation. No one from the police was allowed to enter Magnussen’s house, his corpse was taken quietly and the only thing that someone could call _thorough_ was a search performed by MI6, that showed some interesting materials... but, honestly, it was even less that they got from Irene’s phone. The witnesses of Magnussen’s side – three of his security workers – were generously paid, blackmailed and forced to leave the country with their families. They were told to stay quiet, or they’ll be accused of high treason. Mycroft sent each of them to different countries and guaranteed living in comfort for long years. The only people who knew about it were the Secret Service agents that came with Mycroft, few government members, John and Mary. And, obviously, Jim and Janine what, all in all, meant that the secret wasn’t that well secured as his brother thought it was. Not that Sherlock gave a damn about it, since he knew that Mycroft will defend him like a lioness against any possible reprisals. But the fact that the older Holmes didn’t have a clue about the leak was disturbing. There were huge holes in governmental agencies. The question was: how huge? If a weakened Moriarty, without his network, was able to find the truth in such a short time, it didn’t augurs too well for keeping safety of the British secrets.

When Sherlock finished reading official fairy tales about Magnussen’s death and gave up analysing them, he decided to go for a trip into the past. The results of his first researching however were a little bit disappointing. Henry Hawkins was an exemplary citizen, he lectured maths, firstly in Dublin, after that at the Sussex University in Falmer and finally at few of London colleges, but none of them was a full-time job. He had two PhD degrees of exact sciences however he gave up teaching rather soon, he was only 56 years old – according to his personal note, because of some family issues. He moved to Scotland, where he stays till now, publishing in science press, sometimes participating in conferences and symposia. His career wasn’t brilliant and Henry himself was known only in his own circles, closely related to his major. There was no word about his family problems, divorce or children.

It was much more interesting with Jim’s mother case. Almost nothing was found in the Internet about it and it took Sherlock an hour to find a short note about the fact that something like this murder happened. It’s written on a blog of some elderly Irish journalist who, against retirement boredom, was busy with social problems. The woman, who definitely too often was writing in an annoyingly soppy tone, mentioned about it in just few sentences in an article about cases of murder that were consequence of pathology in families. She was comparing it to some recent crime from Dublin’s suburbs and called it _Tragedy in Clane, when during a family brawl, a couple of a one and a half year old baby died, same as a cohabitant of a woman that was accused of that murder._ Because it was the only scent he got for now – after he wrote a ‘Clane’ and some words related to murder in a browser, her page was the only one found – he started to look through the other articles of that woman. She wrote some series about domestic violence. Without any bigger expectations, Sherlock read the text, looking for keywords when suddenly, right after passing the huge part of morality and moral responsibility, he finally found something interesting.

_And once again we can see nothing but ineffectiveness of local authorities and the police. However, much more disturbing than two Clane massacres and what happened in Firhouse is the fact that we actually could prevent this. We, as citizens, neighbours, teachers, acquaintances – because the symptoms are always the same. Alcoholism, drug addiction, night brawls, neglected children, the sight of which we just turn our eyes away. Because it’s so much easier to walk on the other side of a street or close the window, because every family has its own problems, because the proper authorities surely knows that children are under a unstable persons care and they look after them, because, seriously, what actually can happen? Before a tragedy happens no one believes it’s possible; we used to present an appalling ignorance while the screams are heard on the other side of a wall and our “nothing serious happened before” is as naive as thinking that someone is immortal just because he didn’t die. If some of Dorothy’s D. neighbours intervened, the woman and her sons would still be alive, same as Marcus S. and the twins he was raising with his concubine. Both cases lead to triple murder and ended up with decision of complete insanity of the accused. The accused that were both released from psychiatric hospital prematurely and committed other crimes after a few years. During Sinead H. case the investigation showed unequivocally that before her suicide, the 40 year old woman cruelly murdered both of her brothers, sister-in-law and her own father. The case of homicides committed by Ethan D. is still in progress, for the good of the investigation and the fact that the second body still hasn’t been found, the details weren’t showed for the public opinion. The police appeals to everyone that could..._

Sherlock stopped reading as he realized that the rest of the article could be only about Ethan D., whoever he was. To get familiar with this case, he checked a common news portal on which he found out that a mentally sick man, after he left a hospital, kidnapped two young women in a short time, just because they looked like his wife. As a consequence of a delusion of the dead woman, he killed both of them and was finally arrested while he was trying to bury one of them in some public park. He admitted his guilt during the first interrogation however, despite of efforts of few psychiatrists, he wasn’t able to tell what did he do with the other body.

The detective closed his eyes, as he tried to sum up what he found out. The case of Ethan D. had no bigger meaning for him and the trial of comparing some crimes to that one that took place thirty years ago was just mumbling and a lame attempt to get some attention; the man was obviously mentally ill and it was no sense in relating him with _only disordered_ Sinead who, after she left the hospital, was properly functioning in society, before she killed four members of her family or

_...came with three suspicious guys and one of them was so like her that he must have been her relative._

_...she’ll regret she was ever born._

Or maybe before Moriarty made his decision come true.

Sinead H. Hawkins? After a divorce she most probably stayed under her husband’s name, didn’t get married again, however she had many lovers. So he knew what her name was, he knew the place of the crime, he had information that her boyfriend – Marcus – had a criminal record and theoretically he had enough data to get to sources. The triple murder and after that another massacre, done a few years after Sinead took Jim to Ireland. _So much information_... and nothing. Totally nothing. He surfed the Internet for almost 2 hours and found nothing more, no word, completely nothing in chronicles, articles or any other analyses. Fearing he will achieve nothing without a trip to Clane, Sherlock came back on the Irish journalist’s website and once again he looked through her posts. Suddenly he realized that though she was writing them something about few months ago, they were uploaded just the day before yesterday. He frowned and quickly clicked the section „about me” where he found out that the woman had problems with her website. She was asking the readers to let her know if some of articles will be deleting again.

Bingo!

Without any thinking, he took his phone and looked at the contact information where the number of Alice Flynn was indicated. She was encouraging people to write or call if they had interesting news to share. Sherlock chose the number, looking at a wall clock at the same time – it was almost 9 so there was no reason for her not to pick up. He actually waited only two rings before he heard a little bit hoarse but still kind voice of an elderly lady.

„Good Morning, Ms Flynn, Sherlock Holmes speaking” he started, not bothering to perform someone different because in this particular matter his profession gave him an advantage. For a few seconds he was listening to surprised and full of excitement admirations, waiting impatiently to hear _how can I help you, Mr Holmes?_ “This morning I read some interesting articles of yours. Those about domestic violence. I’m currently investigating a case and I think you can help me.”

“With pleasure. What can I do for you?”

“You had some problems with them, right?”

“Indeed. Something with the website” she confirmed with irritation. “I even called someone from IT to check what’s wrong but he found nothing. The whole series disappeared a few times and some of the articles I lose once a week. Of course, I upload them again and again but...”

“I think it will be better for you if you stop doing it” Sherlock interrupted. “You mentioned in them Sinead Hawkins case and I’m almost absolutely certain that she is the reason.”

“But... it happened so long ago.” The woman seemed surprised. “No one remembers that! When I was looking for some documents about it I didn’t find anything, even in the main police station where her files are kept.”

“You were looking for it in the police station?”

“Obviously” she laughed oddly joyfully as for someone who wrote with such a sentimentality about human morality. “But it turned out that few years ago all documents were moved somewhere else. But I was writing about Sinead in press ages ago, both the first and the second one, when... wait. How do you know her last name?” she asked suspiciously.

“As I said, _I’m currently investigating a case_ ” he answered, making a mental note of that when he will take a trip to Ireland he can give up the visit at the police station. “Ms Flynn, it’s really important. What do you know about Sinead? About both her cases? As you said before, the documents were taken away and on the Internet, except for your articles, there’s no word about them.”

“Yes, I noticed it as well...” she said after few seconds of silence. “Mr Holmes, is it something dangerous? Something big, isn’t it?”

“Definitely. That’s why I strongly recommend not mentioning it on your blog.”

“I was an investigative journalist” she said shortly. „Believe me, I understand it. And I will surely do as you say. About Sinead Hawkins...” she took a deep breath. “I don’t know how much do you know so I’ll speak briefly and you ask for the details if something is unclear: thirty years ago Sinead murdered her partner and two children from a previous marriage. The doctors found her unstable and because of, let’s say, political issues, the case was hushed up. A little bit modified version was given to the public opinion so no one could actually tell if the crime was committed by her or Marcus Sheridan. This woman, Sinead, was well known in the whole neighbourhood, I know something about it because I lived in Clane for some time and had a doubtful pleasure to meet her.”

“Do you think she was ill? That’s what I heard from a person who told me her story.”

“Ill?” she snorted. “I’m sure she wasn’t. She had a serious personality disorder, actually the whole package, believe me. She had some drug issues and the time when it all happened, she was practically never sober. But what’s the most important, she was simply evil and there is no point in looking for an explanation in medicine. She was taken to the psychiatric hospital, however you do realize that only someone _ill_ can be _cured._ There is no help for such a tragic case. She should rot in a prison, whereas she was released from the hospital after a few years, the doctors said she is fine, normal and totally harmless.”

“Do you know why it happened?”

“All people from here do” she hissed. “Forgive me my tone but this case irritates me even after so many years. You see, Sinead’s father was a councilman and a successful businessman. Rich, influential man, totally twisted around his daughter’s little finger, ready to get her out from every shithole.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

“Of course. Lorcan Patton. You’ll find him in local chronicles without any problems but let me warn you, there’s only a short note about his death. _A tragic accident._ ”

“Sinead done it, didn’t she?”

“It was...” for the very first time since they started their talk, Alice Flynn faltered. “I’ll tell you an official version that was published when it happened. The official but after all it was hushed up as well. Sinead was still living in Clane, huge house, a gift from her father, obviously because that woman never took any job. Her younger brother, that lived with her that time, joined Sinead in her drug-alcoholic trance. Nasty thing. I was coming to Clane only for holidays, to visit a friend, but the whole neighbourhood simply rumbled disgusting gossips about those two. But the murder was committed in their father’s house, during a family meeting. I don’t want to dig any deeper in details, I’m sure you saw enough of massacred bodies in your life so you can imagine what was there. The bodies of Sinead and the others were found after few days when her adult son called the police to report her missing. When the police got there, even the strongest stomachs couldn’t handle the view. It was a _slaughter_. Some of the bodies parts couldn’t be matched without DNA analysis and...”

“Sorry to interrupt but... when did it happened?”

“1997. May I continue?”

“Yes, of course. Again, I apologize” Sherlock said and Ms Flynn snorted shortly but didn’t comment it with even a word.

“Those people were literally shredded. Except for Sinead who took a huge quantity of pipe cleaner, rat poison and alcohol. Horrible death but comparing to the others, her corpse was almost beautiful.”

“There is a _but_ though.”

“Of course there is. How it was possible that sick, petite alcoholic could do such a massacre? Those people were chopped alive. Even if she was able to kill one person, there was no way Sinead could murder four of them. Someone could escape, got out there somehow, some trails of a fight should be left, whereas all of them were sober, apart from a little bit of wine, no one was tied up or immobilized in any other way so there was no way they were taken from by surprise. Besides, when a drug addict commits suicide, he takes a ‘golden shot’, he won’t stuff himself with some random stuff. In Sinead’s bag the police found a horse-dose of drugs so you have to admit, something’s wrong.”

“However you posted the official version on your blog. The story about a lunatic who murdered her whole family and killed herself after that.”

“Yes, I did. Because, you know... here’s the thing.” She silenced for a while, wondering. “The case was investigated for quite a long time and the police... it looked like someone on purpose tried to make their operations even harder. Finally the case got closed, kept in a secret and it became a taboo, a horrifying story that is told by people gathered around a bonfire, with a proper dose of alcohol. During the investigation two police officers died in unexplained circumstances, a prosecutor had a weird accident when he was skiing and he never recovered. Like someone didn’t want the case to be fully solved. I’m sure you are familiar with such situations. At least I hope so because when I tried to talk with anyone about it, people took me for an old, paranoiac lunatic. You’re the first person that wanted to hear that story from me from the beginning to the end.”

“I know perfectly well what you’re talking about” Sherlock answered calmly. “There is a fatality hanging over some cases. That’s what you wanted to tell me, right?”

“ _Exactly._ ” she sighed with kind of relief.

“Do you have any suspicions?”

“There was a time when I had lots of them but, to be honest, I gave up this case. Lorcan Patton had a lot of enemies. He wasn’t a politician anymore but he ran some suspicious businesses that annoyed some of the VIPs. Someone could’ve got angry and simply killed him and the others because all members of his family, except for Sinead obviously, were working for him.”

“Is this the only theory?”

“The most probable one. The rest of them are just my stupid imagination. I’m ashamed to even talk about them in my old age” she said and there was something about her tone that made Sherlock smiled with some kind of nostalgia.

“It’s not that important. Actually... there’s one more thing that puzzles me. Sinead’s son. What can you tell me about him. Anything.”

“Oh... James. Or Joshua maybe?” she wondered for a while. “I think it’s Joshua. Weird kid. He had nothing to do with that case, didn’t keep in touch with his mother or anyone in his family. And when that tragedy happened he wasn’t even living in that house but in Dublin, as far as I remember. When the case was investigated and the matter of a testament was closed, he sold the whole property, that belonged to his mother, and simply disappeared. He was present at the only one interrogation, the first one and after that he left permanently because it was obvious that he had nothing to do with the murder.”

“How old was he back then? Didn’t he need a legal guardian?”

“If believe the gossips, he moved from his mother’s house the very same day when he came of age.” Flynn said. “So something about two months earlier. I have to tell you, I wasn’t interested in him at all. It was such a weird boy, quite...unseen. Maybe I have some information about him in my documents that I keep in my house. I can sent them if you’re interested in him but I really doubt that there will be more than I said.”

“To be honest, it will be the best for you if you find them all and burn.” he answered. Sherlock knew that with such kind of a woman he doesn’t have to play any games and tell her a version filled by euphemisms. “There is a reason why I’m investigating that case and, even for my standards, there are too many corpses in it than was expected. I really don’t want to see another one.”

“In your mouth it sounds reliable enough so I won’t argue.” she said and snorted. “If anyone else warned me, I’d take it as a grumbling of boring people but you, Mr Holmes, are not like them. And certainly... I’ll look for Sinead Hawkins case and destroy all files.”

“Thank you for not making me and yourself any troubles.”

“No, I thank you that you warned me. Good luck though” she added after a while. “In that investigation thing. Whatever it concerns. Are there any chances I’ll read about it later on your friend’s blog?”

“I hardly think so. We both have plans to live to a happy old age” he answered and they laughed. Then they shared kindnesses and ended the conversation without an unnecessary lengthening.

When he put his phone away, Sherlock was sitting motionlessly, letting the missed parts of a puzzle go back to their places. So that’s how Moriarty was born – he closed his childhood period in the most brutal way, he cut all of the bonds that related him with his past and buried James Hawkins, running away from his home town and leaving some dead bodies behind. He had some buds of his network already, strong enough to simply disappear and thanks to the testament, he had money to run his business. He was able to become invisible and uninteresting, the shade that no one pays attention to. He covered up the trail of his childhood and the information about the fact that someone called James Hawkins existed was something that only old journalists and neighbours knew. Jim deleted all of his files from the places where they could be found – that’s why they couldn’t find anything in Brighton – and his name from the memory of people that knew him that time. He was purging the Internet and eliminating all posts about his mother who could be related to him. Also, it was possible that he confused some facts about his father, not to let anyone know that he had a son from his first marriage. Sherlock assumed that if he was searching through the archives of  the family courts, there would be some black holes as well.

However it didn’t matter, all this cutting off bounds that related Moriarty with James Hawkins. He didn’t let anyone to get into his past for years and the only thing or person that was a connection of it and Jim was Janine. Only thanks to her Sherlock was able to find a point of reference and to get from thread to a ball, meticulously uncovering all the layers. To be honest, when Sherlock got a fragment of Moriarty’s past, one tiny thing that couldn’t be found for years, the rest was going smoothly. A trip through the south part of the country, long hours spent on the Internet, hundreds of websites seen, a few meetings, and one phone call. He didn’t even have to involve Mycroft. Didn’t have to have John beside him.

The only thing he wasn’t sure about was the fact if Moriarty told him about Janine on purpose, as he was counting that the detective will catch the trail and start to dig, or maybe he did it just for fun or his own business, underestimating Sherlock’s investigative skills. Despite of Moriarty’s intelligence and lots of his talents, he staked on the second version what gave him few desired aces that Sherlock intended to use in proper time.

***

Sherlock postponed his visit in Barts until a later hour when he hacked an internal server of the hospital – he was doing it very often because the collaterals were ridiculously easy to break – and found out that Molly, who he was planning to see, had an afternoon shift. To do something useful until he left his apartment, Sherlock started to put Moriarty’s files in order, those which he collected in the past few years and hid in one of his lockers in the floor. He memorized most of the documents, newspaper cuttings, articles and reports but he kept them because of some kind of fondness. However looking through them somehow gave him pleasure and when he added something new – like this time, Janine’s registers and files – he felt satisfaction, almost as huge as when he was solving a case.

To prepare himself for a talk with Molly, Sherlock returned to a copy of the report about Moriarty’s death. This one that Mycroft gave him when the detective came back to London after 2-years of exile. And yes, his friend’s signature actually was seen right next to few others but he didn’t pay any attention to this when he had those documents in his hands for the very first time. And again, that time there were more important matters that made him save a space in his Mind Palace for only those things that Mycroft told him. Sherlock assumed that his brother wouldn’t lie to him in the matter that was so important to an investigation but on the other hand, he was wrong to trust Mycroft’s infallibility.

How did Moriarty do that?

Sherlock hoped to find this out really soon and when he was finally about to leave his flat, he was so amused that while he was putting his coat on, the detective took such a wide swing that he dropped his phone from the table. Sherlock picked it up and rolled his eyes with irritation as he saw that it’s completely discharged. He wasn’t going to postpone his visit in Barts again so he put a charger into his pocket and took a laptop just to get busy with something in the cab. As usual, Sherlock quickly called a taxi and when he sat on a back seat, he opened his computer straight away. After he logged in by complicated passwords, the detective found the files that Mycroft sent him. He looked them through quickly, staring at the scans of documents of three people from Moriarty’s network but neither names nor faces were familiar to him. He was 100% sure that he was looking at them for the very first time, couldn’t relate them with any case he was solving so they had to be Moriarty’s bargain workers, that’s why Sherlock and Mycroft didn’t consider them as a part of the criminal’s network, they were simply nothing but pawns. Were they actually helping Jim 3 years ago or did he just call them for protection?

He rather doubted that it could be the second option because none of them had in his files note about fitness above the average or any experience with guns. Moreover, one of them was an accountant and the two others worked on base posts in some corporation, a director of which was a part of Moriarty’s network and he was serving a sentence for tax fraud. And this is what Mycroft found suspicious? It was obvious that those people didn’t even know they took part in something illegal.

Only for peace of his mind he looked through documents that contained their history of employment, searching for something worth attention. Where there was only the ending left, a part of childhood and private issues of the last one – the accountant’s – he saw the walls of Barts. Only double traffic lights separated his cab from the hospital. As he was just about to close his laptop, he noticed something familiar.

Brighton.

He peeped at a last name of the man he saw but it still didn’t tell him anything, unlike the address of a school, hidden in a file ‘education’. The dates and places were matched because he was studying the same time as Jim and, what Google Maps confirmed, he lived near to Moriarty and Janine. Sherlock considered going back to Brighton for a while to get his documents as well but finally he realized there was no point; the guy lived in exemplary way, didn’t make any trouble to the authorities for over thirty years and though he knew young James Hawkins and probably fell a victim for his intrigues, he was no one important. And also there was no chance to find by him some unknown information of Jim from the past. He was a part of people that Sherlock already knew – once again the detective peeked at the names of the others – those two could lead him somewhere he wasn’t before.

Not closing his laptop even for a moment, he paid for a cab and, still staring at the screen, Sherlock went towards the doors of Barts. He wasn’t looking where he was going so he ran into someone twice, but except for the fact that his computer dangerously rocked in his hands, he didn’t really notice what was happening around him, too lost in his thoughts. During his escape, Moriarty didn’t use anyone who was permanently associated with his network, however, if Sherlock’s theory was real, he was involving in such delicate matter someone from his past who didn’t take part in his present operations. It was hard to say why did he do that, it was possible that he wanted to move the centre of gravity from his threatened by both Magnussen and Sherlocks network. How it turned out, it was unnecessary trouble because Mycroft arrested those people and interrogated them... but on the other hand, he got nothing from them. Again: he got nothing because they knew nothing or because Moriarty so perfectly prepared them to the roles they were about to perform?

When he finally reached the doors of the morgue, his head was so busy with the case of those three that he almost forgot what he came here for. As he tore himself from the numbness, he suddenly closed  his laptop and took it under his arm, looking around the hall and realizing surprisingly that there were more people than he expected. Donovan and Anderson were standing next to the coffee machine, leaning towards each other and whispering. Ah... so the romance was flourishing and an absence of this idiot on New Year’s Eve party could be explained by spending time with his wife, not a lover from work. Sherlock smiled mockingly as he saw the whole pallet of compromising things in their postures, way their clothes and hair were set and even her make-up. He wanted to go to them, tease this couple a little but he had more important things to do. Molly Hooper! All in all, she was the reason why he came here.

With certain steps, he went through the door of the morgue, then the main hall but when he was just about to go to her office, Sherlock heard the agitated voice of Lestrade, reaching from the room where the autopsy was carried. A case? Seems like nothing interesting since he wasn’t invited but because of the fact that in between those screams he heard the nervous voice of his friend, he decided to look there instead of waiting for Molly in her office.

“Sherlock!” Molly, Lestrade and John shouted at the same time. John who... what the hell  was John doing here? The man was holding a phone in his hand, squeezing it strongly and as he saw Sherlock, his face showed nothing but relief. “God, Sherlock, where have you been?” Lestrade asked with a nervous voice and the detective simply shrugged in answer.

“My phone is dead.” he said indifferently and he started to move awkwardly to get his phone and a charger from his pocket, without putting his laptop away.

“Your phone is NEVER dead” John answered. “Lestrade texted you before afternoon but you didn’t write back.”

“I thought you don’t care about me. Which wouldn’t be a surprise.”

“But since it was _important_ , he contacted me.”

“What for?” Sherlock snorted, falling on a chair and nervously put a charger to socket. The phone lighted a little and after few seconds the messages and reports about missed calls began to appear on a screen.

“I thought you two were somewhere together but...” Lestrade scratched his head. “I didn’t specify what I meant so I told John to come here.”

“You called me _thirty times?_ In _an hour?_ ” Sherlock snorted again, still staring at his phone. “Lovely. So what’s the case?”

“It wasn’t about any case but the fact your phone was inactive and I was worried” John said and took few steps towards him. Sherlock stiffened as he felt John’s hand on his arm. “You never turn off your phone. You’re not picking up, ok. But never...” he silenced for a second. “I thought something happened to you.”

“As you can see I’m all alive and well” the detective said and moved away a little. “You called Mycroft!” he threw accusingly and John just wrung his hands.

“I was here and you were out of reach. It was faster than going to Baker Street.”

“Oh and what did my brother say?” he asked and opened a text from Mycroft in which the man told him to answer because _he didn’t feel like picking up hysterical calls from his boyfriend._ He rolled his eyes and finally looked up at stooped John who was scowling at him.

“That you just left your apartment and took a cab...”

“And that you’re solving an important case and told him not to bother you” Lestrade finished for him. “I know you’re busy with Moriarty’s case but since you’re here... Can you take a look at that?” he pointed at three tables where there were covered corpses lying.

“Why not...?” he mumbled and peered at Molly but he could talk to her later, after all. And getting busy with another problem that he had with his work in Scotland Yard was a perfect trial of diverting everyone’s attention from the real reason of his arrival. And maybe they won’t even ask any questions about what he found in Moriarty’s case. “What is this about?”

“Three bodies found this morning.” Molly said with this nervous voice, so typical of her. “They were planted... at the back of Barts.”

“Getting interesting” Sherlock answered. “Who are those people?”

“No clue. They had no documents, were wearing only underwear, no distinguishing marks except for...” she silenced for a while. “Better look at it yourself.” She nodded at Sherlock and stood next to the first body.

“Sally is already working on identify those men by checking reports of missing...” Lestrade started but Sherlock interrupted him with impatiently snort.

“Just three minutes ago Sally was working on sucking Anderson’s dick in a toilette for stuff.” he said. “With a great luck and reciprocity so I assume that she’s already doing it. A lot of women have increased ratios of intelligence after intercourse although I hardly think that any activity with Anderson...” at this moment he uncovered the face of a first man and the words stuck in his throat. “Show me the others” he demanded changing his tone so suddenly that Lestrade and John didn’t have an opportunity to reprimand him for the insinuations about Anderson and Donovan. Molly obediently took few steps and stopped between two tables, uncovering the second body, closer to Sherlock and then the third one. The man, as he saw the faces of those two, got a little bit pale and carefully put his laptop away on the closest shelf, and, without saying anything, put on latex gloves.

“Time of death?” he asked quietly, looking at a gunshot wound in the skull of the man that was lying between the other two, who had the identical wounds; you didn’t have to be genius to assume that it caused their death.

“All three men died last night. Between one and three a.m.” Molly answered. “They were doped by the same drug and it’s precisely analyzed right now. They didn’t fight back.” Sherlock nodded his head, noticing marks of the needle on the neck of a victim. “They were dead for six, max seven hours when the bodies were delivered on the back of the hospital.”

“They laid outside for almost two hours” the detective said after a short blood inspection. “And were brought by a delivery van of a small flower shop.”

“A flower shop?”

“Marks of cheap leaf rinse measures. And the scent” he said shortly. “What was the thing you wanted to show me? You wouldn’t call me for three unidentified bodies that obviously look like the victims of gangs feuding... Oh...” he sighed when Molly uncovered the sheets a little bit lower so he could see the chest of a victim. She did the same thing with other bodies and now Sherlock was looking at the three identical marks – reaching from the collarbones to hip bones, deeply furrowed with a blunt tool a X sign. “Fruit knife” he said quietly. “Done after death, an hour maybe a little bit later. They were shot, undressed, ended up like this.”

“What do you think about it?” Lestrade asked and Sherlock raised his head to look into police officer’s eyes.

“Do YOU have any ideas?”

“A cult? Gangs feuding? The Satanists?” he said with resignation. “It clearly looks like some ritual...”

“Looks like a message” Sherlock interrupted him. “I’ll talk to Mycroft, see if there’s something in his documents. This one with gangs sounds the best and won’t draw too many atten...”

“Three people died and you instead of investigating are wondering if...” John started with outrage but silenced when he saw Sherlock’s empty look. “Oh my God... You already know everything. What is this abou...”

“Give me your phone, John” he demanded and doctor sighed with irritation but wrenched a phone out of his pocket and took a step towards Sherlock. When he was giving it to the detective, their fingers touched each other for a moment but the detective was too shaken and excited right now so he didn’t even realize what happened. He twitched almost imperceptibly and stared at a deadly face of a man lying in front of him. “Hello, brother mine” he said a moment after, just when Mycroft picked up his phone.

“Are you calling me to report that you’re with John already, calming his nerves?” he mocked but Sherlock was way too amused to even bother about the mutual teasing of pointing their pressure points out.

“I’m calling you to say that you should pay a little bit more to the families of Magnussen’s bodyguards. A double should be enough if their wives aren’t too greedy.”

“What are you...?”

“I’m in Barts morgue...” he silenced suddenly, staring at the sign _smiling at him_ on the victim’s chest. “And I’m just looking at the three of them.” after his words a complete silence fell on the other side of a phone so he decided to continue. “A single gunshot wound and message carved on the bodies.”

“I’ll be there in a half an hour.”

“Prepare the information that you will tell the press when there’ll be a leak. I think gangs feuding sounds the best. And Mycroft...” He turned away and took few steps so no one could hear the words he whispered. “I know it’s not you but you’ll have to try to convince your friends from MI6 about it. They were suspicious when you didn’t want to leave me in jail and when you decided to pay the witnesses and send them out of England and since they died...”

“It doesn’t look good because it seems like there is someone else who knows about the whole thing and wants to protect you.” Mycroft finished for him. “What kind of message?” he sighed with such a tired voice that Sherlock suddenly lost his will to tease his brother.

“Three X’s.”

“Damn...!” the older Holmes hissed. “I’ll be there in 15 minutes. Don’t do anything stupid. And don’t go anywhere.”

“See you later, brother mine.” Sherlock answered, without any comment about Mycroft’s order. He hung up, went to John to give his phone back and after that turned towards the door. “Lestrade, the case is taken by Secret Service. Dismiss all of your people and tell them to forget about all the things they saw if they don’t want to end up as those three.”

“What are you talking about? What’s with this Magnussen’s issue and... Sherlock!” the policeman shouted angrily. “What does this man had to do with that?”

“Just that the information about his death were fake and those three men knew about it. For your own good, stop being interested in this case and leave it to my brother. Molly, may I speak with you for a moment? It’s not about the...” he nodded at the tables with corpses that the woman covered again.

“Of course” she said with a little bit shy smile but before Sherlock left the room to go with her to an office, he felt a strong grip on his wrist, his eyes met the hard glance of John who clearly didn’t know when to let go.

“Molly, wait for Sherlock. He will join you in a minute. Greg, can you...” He turned to Lestrade but he was already leaving the place with a phone pressed to his cheek.

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Molly said and left the room, looking at them hesitantly.

“So... Sherlock. I think I deserve a little bit more explanation than them, don’t you think?” he asked, crossing his arms on his chest.

“This case doesn’t concern you. Lestrade shouldn’t be calling you and it would be better if you also...”

“Sherlock, you’re an idiot.” John said. “Three people has died because they saw as you were killing Magnussen. And, as far as you remember, I was there as well so yes, it DOES concern me!”

“You’re safe” he answered calmly but took a step back when John squinted his eyes with anger. “I know who did this and it has nothing to do with you.”

“So please, enlighten me.”

“I’m investigating this case without you. I’m sorry” Sherlock said and was just about to turn away when John jumped to him and grabbed his arms, driving his fingers in them almost painfully.

“I’m worried. Don’t you get it? I know it’s so bloody hard for you to understand that people can actually _feel_ something and _care_ about the others but YES, I am worried about you. I can see that something’s happening, you’re hiding something important from me and getting into trouble.”

“John...”

“It has something to do with Janine, hasn’t it? With that thing you told about her on New Year’s Eve, right?”

“Yes, it has but I discovered some other things and it turned out that she isn’t such a big danger as I thought.” He tried to release himself from John’s squeeze but he moved a little bit closer to him and his grip became even stronger.

“Fine. I’ll call her even today and get from her...”

“Try to do it and you’ll find yourself here on this table, probably with Mary if you’ll involve her as well” Sherlock snapped. “Leave it, let it go. Leave me alone, don’t think and don’t try to...”

“Then tell me what’s going on!”

“It’s about Moriarty and this is all I can tell you. You’re saying that I don’t understand that people _worry_? So imagine that, I’m worried about _you,_ and believe me, I have my reasons.”

“Sherlock...”

“And now, if you excuse me, I have to talk with Molly and...” Sherlock finally managed to free himself from John’s grip and he immediately run to his phone, literally snatched a charger from a socket and after that he took his laptop and took few steps towards doors, trying to open them by his elbow with no effect. John watched him for a while and before Sherlock did anything with a handle, doctor put his hand on it.

“We were solving hundreds of cases together and I want you to remember you can count on me. Despite of what you’re thinking, the fact that I have a family doesn’t change a thing” he said and opened the door for Sherlock. The detective was looking into his eyes for a few seconds like he wanted to say something but his voice stuck in his throat. He turned on his heel and, ignoring John’s staring, he went to Molly’s office, placed two halls away. To be honest, the meeting with her was only a formality for him that he was planning to deal with in the first place since he was here, just to take care of more important things after that.

He had to contact Moriarty as fast as it was possible. Tell him that his favourite princess _appreciates the bouquet,_ however it aroused interest of the courtiers and seriously intrigued her brother-the prince. And warn him that if anything happens to John, the dead body of Janine will be fished out the Thames exactly the same day. But now... yes, Molly.

“Hello again” he said and slammed the door much more loudly than it was necessary however it brought the perfect effect: the woman jumped on her chair and paled immediately. “And now you’ll tell me with all the details about the report of Moriarty’s death. And remember, my dear, if you’ll try to lie to me in any tiny issue...”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about” the woman squeaked but Sherlock didn’t fall for that.

“...I’ll tell my brother about it. And he will find a clause to accuse you for hindering the work of Secret Service. And then he will put you into jail for long years. Now...” he sat comfortably on a chair, in front of her “I’m listening.”

“Sherlock, I...” she stammered and cleared her throat as she realized that her voice sounds like he was some kid from primary school. “I really don’t know what’s going on... Mycroft was in Barts almost all the time. When I did that thing with changing your body and when you two told me that Jim shot himself, I stuck in the laboratory, waiting for samples and...”

“Slowly, Molly” Sherlock interrupted her. “I want to know how exactly it looked like, what happened, step by step. Mycroft came with me few minutes after we faked my suicide, I told him instantly what happened on Barts roof so he sent his men there to take care of Moriarty’s body. I wanted to go there as well but he told me it was too risky. Someone could see me, besides, I thought I could come here by night and look at his body closely so I didn’t argue. I had to disappear from the hospital what wasn’t a big problem in this all chaos with press and the police. Mycroft stayed here and...?”

“He came here and told me that his people are already on the roof, securing the place.” she answered with embittered voice and lowered her eyes. “Your brother was...” she silenced for a while, squeezing her tiny hands. “He was really cruel. Worse than you. He said that maybe you’re sincerely grateful for my help but he’ll never forget that because of me Moriarty got to you and everything that happened was only my fault so in his eyes, I have moral duty to do everything I can to help you. And then...” she took a deep breath and said with quiet and sad voice. “He was called by someone from the roof and told that the body was taken away. Mycroft told me not to go anywhere and went on the roof and then...” another pause. “I don’t know, maybe a quarter later someone of his men came and gave me samples from the roof. You know, blood and a little bit of tissue. I was surprised that it went so fast but he said that it has to be done with priority and I’ll get more materials later but I have to focus on what I was given already. Oh and he mentioned that Mycroft told it has to be compared with the DNA of the man from the trial... But I didn’t have those samples or materials. When I told him that he just nodded and said that Mycroft will probably give them to me in a minute. And he really came to me after few minutes with a flash drive where he kept those data. He told me to wait for the samples from the roof. I didn’t even get to tell him that his man gave me some of those...”

“I don’t believe it...” Sherlock stumbled, grabbing his head, paralysed by the fact that the explanation was so childish simple, consisting in lying to Molly about samples. “I assume that you got the second part of the materials, right? Blood with spinal cord, fragments of bones...”

“Yes, the rest of them was delivered an hour later when I already knew it was Jim.”

“And you didn’t check that part, did you?”

“What was the point? The same man gave it to me, he only told me to clean up those bones parts and then describe it all and secure. He asked me if he can tell Mycroft about the results so I said yes and...” she silenced, looking away. “If he told me to analyse them one more time, I’d refuse...” she said quietly. “I’d tell them to take someone else from the laboratory. You know, Sherlock, it is the truth that a doctor shouldn’t be treating their own relatives and a pathologist shouldn’t be analyzing the bodies of their close ones. I was dating him, I was in love with him and even if he turned out to be a monster I just couldn’t be doing this. Working on the remains that were... _him_ before.”

“I don’t condemn you. But it’s worth knowing that... well, that someone used it.”

“What...?”

“What did this agent look like? This one who brought you those samples” Sherlock asked, rubbing his sore temples. “No... Think about it carefully. Mycroft will be here in a couple of minutes. Tell him exactly what you told me. And describe that man as precisely as it’s possible.”

“What’s going on, Sherlock...?”

“It was a spy” he sighed. “MI6 leak. I knew since the last few days that there has to be one. Killing Magnussen was a political issue and his bodyguards, those who are lying dead in morgue, knew the truth. They were murdered because someone from Secret Service had to send an information about their profiles to a proper person and we have to find out who it was as fast as we can. The security of the country depends on it.” He took his discharged phone from his pocket and he cursed to himself as he realized that there’s only one battery degree left. “Give me your phone” he asked and a moment later he was talking to Mycroft again.

“When you arrive here, go straight to Molly Hooper. You have a spy in Secret Service. Someone who was in Barts and Magnussen’s house. No idea who it might be so don’t tell anyone about this, just go to her and find out who it is.”

“For God’s sake, Sherlock!” Mycroft groaned with a pain in his voice. “Do you have some more nightmarish news for me? Come on, let’s take it with one shot...!”

“Beside the fact that for three years you’ve been a blind moron who, in his whole ingenuousness, didn’t realize that he had a spy in his own ranks?” he asked and though it was an exaggerated malice, he knew that in this moment, it will be good for Mycroft to hit him with such a hard truth. “Well... I have one information that you might be interested in.” he said, looking straight into his friend’s eyes. “Thanks to your incompetence, Moriarty is probably still alive so... I have more important things to do than telling lies to press or looking for a spy amongst your men” he finished and, without hanging up the phone, he gave it back to the shocked Molly.

“Sherlock... what you said just now... is it...?”

“Don’t tell anyone about our talk. _Anyone_ but Mycroft. And by saying _anyone_ I meant John, Mary, Lestrade, your boyfriend and pretty much everyone on this planet. May I?” he asked pointing an apple, lying on a plate next to Molly’s laptop.

“What do you need that for...?”

“Have a nice chat with my brother” he said, not answering the question, took the fruit and went towards the exit.

 

***

 

 


	7. Old Friends

***

Sherlock buried himself in one of the left rooms on the last floor of a hospital, carefully closed the door and then took off his coat, put a laptop in front of himself and twiddled few times with an apple taken from Molly’s office. He smiled to himself, pulled a penknife out of his pocket and meticulously cut three Xs in the fruit, one by one, then took a photo of his work and sent as MMS.

 _Princess thanks for the bouquet. She loved it so much that she wishes to meet the bad boy. How fast can you get on Barts roof?_ He wrote hastily and sent a message. After he did that, Sherlock connected his phone to his charger because the energy of battery was still too low. He intended to turn his phone off after receiving the message because he was afraid that if he didn’t do that, despite of collaterals, Mycroft will find out where detective is right now and it was the last thing that Sherlock needed at this moment; of course, his brother will be very, very busy right now but the moment when he will demand some more details about Moriarty has just postponed until a later date. Sherlock knew that, theoretically, he didn’t have to say a word about Jim however what would be the point of such movement? He couldn’t let the spy, who was quite easy to find, was still working in Secret Service and it was obvious that when Mycroft will be talking with Molly, he’ll notice that she was analyzing the wrong samples – delivered by one of Moriarty’s men, who had to speak with his real boss somewhere in Barts. Just a shallow incision on the skin would be enough: the blood and tissues were fresh so there were no doubts that they belonged to the right person. And remains from a roof? When the more complicated issues were explained, it wasn’t hard to believe in one of the theories about little bags with blood, fake gun and fabricated sound of a shot. Moriarty was a good actor. Besides, playing corpse was rather undemanding and Sherlock knew that from his own experience.

Waiting for an answer, Sherlock got online and, as he was aware of the fact that he had nothing else to do – checking the  biographies of two suspect men from Mycroft’s file needed a bigger peace of mind and more time – he logged into his website to look through the SPAM that was posted before he blocked the forum this morning. He was surprised that since that time a few new posts were sent. He logged out and got into forum as a regular user – no, the access was still unavailable – another logging and posts that had no right to be there, actually _still were._ But before he even got to read them chronologically, the system showed him the information that a new user appeared and was looking through the forum. A user with a meaningful nick – XXX. He checked his IP as an administrator but it indicated Azerbaijan, which wasn’t that shocking after all. Without any thinking, he clicked Moriarty’s profile, who granted to himself right to be administrator, and then he sent him a private message:

_Did you get my text?_

_Yes_.  He immediately received an answer on a forum and after few seconds another one came. _But I wanted to keep you in suspense a little. Congratulations, by the way. You matched it faster than I expected. Much faster._

_Kisses cut on the bodies of the men that could threaten me? I don’t have much fans who would do such thing. When will you be here?_

_In 10 minutes. Don’t come too early. It would be awkward to run into each other next to the ladder._

_10 minutes. I promise._

_And bring me that apple. XXX._

Sherlock laughed when he read the last message and as he realized that Moriarty was sitting somewhere in Barts, hidden for a few hours, he found himself shaking in excitement. _He was here all the time._ It was possible that he came with the corpses, in this van from a flower shop and since that time he didn’t go anywhere; Sherlock doubted, of course, that Moriarty was delivering the bodies by himself but he couldn’t exclude such a possibility. But the best thing was the fact that Jim seemed to assume that Sherlock was busy only with the case of three bodyguards... and he couldn’t even think that detective was talking with Molly about the situation from 3 years ago.

He waited for exactly 8 minutes, deleting the SPAM on the forum during that time. He knew that Moriarty was responsible for this – even if none of the posts was signed with XXX – and,  in respect of something, some kind of fondness told him not to do anything with them. However, he didn’t want to allow anybody to read this crap. And he hated that photo with the hat so much that he’d love to delete it from the whole Internet. Maybe he should ask Moriarty to take care of it, because he was almost sure that Jim could do much more than him with hacking. On the other hand, he was afraid that the criminal, when he hear such a request, will post the image on purpose on all the portals that were significant in England or do something humiliating with it.

Before Sherlock left the room, he turned off his phone and laptop and, after taking the battery out of the both of them, he hid his equipment to in a drawer of a dusted desk, carefully fastened up his coat, took the cut apple and closed the door with a master key. The detective walked through the hall in hurry and before he got to the ladder, he put his leather gloves on. It wasn’t like that he cared about leaving fingerprints but it was unusually coldly and he didn’t want the physical discomfort turning his attention away from Moriarty.

When he came onto the roof, his eyes immediately turned in direction of the balustrade where Jim was waiting for him over 3 years ago; the man wasn’t there right now and he didn’t hear sounds of the Staying Alive song. A little bit disappointing but on the other hand... maybe it was good that Jim didn’t try to reconstruct that situation too much because it could lead the situation to a direction Sherlock didn’t approve of. He took a few steps and began to walk around one of the farmstead of an air conditioner; when he reached the corner of it, he smiled and accelerated towards Jim who was sitting on the ground and leaned his back against the chimney platform. The man looked straight into his eyes, with a slight smile on his face, and when Sherlock sat beside him, he extended his hand.

“My apple” he said and when the fruit was given to him, Jim took a bite of it and chewed juicy pulp for a while. “Do you know, why am I sitting right here, not there?” he asked and Sherlock only rolled his eyes, not even trying to guess. “That’s my favourite conspiracy theory. I read this story over a hundred times, trying to imagine that we’re, you know, sitting here and dropping a puppet of you.”

“And then kissing” Sherlock muttered, shaking his head. Obviously, he read that story as well because there was a time when it caused a sensation on the Internet. No one in the right mind could take it seriously but it had some kind of naive charm, which apparently amused the most paranoid fans.

“I’m not such an optimist so I don’t think it’ll happen” Moriarty said, staring at Sherlock and smiling the whole time. “Unless you’d like to do it because _I_ am more than willing to recreate that scene till its ending.”

“No.”

“Maybe it’s worth trying” he sighed with insincere disappointment and took another bite. Sherlock was staring for awhile longer at his wrist, once again noticing faded scars on it. He’d love to touch his hand and carefully examine the hurt skin but he was able to stop himself this time, although it wasn’t easy. He shook his head and looked at Moriarty’s face that was too pale, and then at his hair, slicked back, exactly the same way as they were 3 years ago. He noticed some single wisps that, though they weren’t grey, looked like a little bit faded, deprived of variety of colour. An incredible quantity of hair gel, that the man was using, didn’t hide them. Sherlock moved his gaze a little bit lower, on Moriarty’s neck. An elegant scarf, loosely tied, next – short coat, definitely too thin for early January but almost the same as he was wearing 3 years ago. “Are you reading me again? I can feel tingling on the places that you’re looking at. But it’s nice kind of tingling.” he muttered in parody of flirtation which made Sherlock confused but he didn’t show anything.

“I’m wondering where to start. I have some questions” Sherlock answered, assuming that it will be better if he would just ignore such provocation.

“I’ll answer to every single one. But only if you tell me what you see” he said looking at the detective with an unspecified expression. He was slightly smiling but his eyes stayed cold and imperturbable, somehow colourless, deprived of life. He was performing, that was more than obvious.

“A mask.” Sherlock answered without thinking. Moriarty frowned, waiting for continuation. “You wore the same clothes as last time but sat in a different place. You’re commenting this whole situation like it’s so much fun for you, though you perfectly know it’s embarrassing for me.”

“Oh, Sherlock. As the matter of fact, since the very beginning of this meeting I didn’t say anything that wouldn’t be truth.”

“I’m not fond of flirting since Irene Adler’s case so you’re just annoying me right now.” Sherlock said, looking straight into his eyes and wondering if Jim will notice that _his_ words had actually nothing to do with the truth. “But let’s get back to you if you are in such a need to hear more than you already _know that I know_.”

“I’m listening.”

“Your hiatus wasn’t a kind of relaxing holiday.” Sherlock began, changing his position a little, turning to Moriarty just to get more comfortable while he was reading him. He silenced for a moment and then words started to fly from his mouth in a monotonous current like it always happened when he was deducing someone without any inhibitions. “You had some problems when I cut you off from your network and you had to hide yourself from Magnussen. I don’t know what you’ve been doing during the first two years but I assume that you wanted to wait in a safe place when it was the most dangerous for you. You wanted to lurk just to rebuilt the network all over again, because I simply don’t believe that you’re going to hide yourself for the rest of your life in some quiet resort and live with the savings of accounts in Switzerland. You were on your way back to the game, slowly and carefully however something about a year ago something went wrong. You got yourself in trouble, something serious, you took a risk and were kidnapped. Considering the way you’re looking at me right now, it was the result of a nightmarish and embarrassing mistake. You were imprisoned and tortured, and when you finally got out, you have been a total wreck, both mental and physical. When it all ended, you got sick, considering the way you’re breathing when it’s cold outside, it was a pneumonia with some complications. Why complications? You were treating your body by yourself at the beginning, afraid to go to a hospital, so it was somewhere in England because you can be easily recognized only here and your condition was so bad that a further trip wasn’t an option. When you were kidnapped, your prison was a very cold room, that’s where the illness came from. And it makes you even more nervous than thinking about the torture or illness itself, I’m right, am I not? I can see you getting pale even more than before. What’s going on with this cold, Jim?” he asked, pretending he didn’t notice that Moriarty started at the sound of his own name, who Sherlock used towards him for the first time. The detective couldn’t resist anymore, he seized Jim’s hand and moved so he could see his faded marks. “The cold induces Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and yet you’re coming here too thinly dressed. You’re trying to prove something to me or yourself but there’s no point since I noticed it all and since you’re still so weak that it can only harm you. You lost a lot of weight during last months, you had anaemia and suffered from insomnia, and you didn’t have much sleep last night, by the way. If any. You have nervous twitches when someone is moving too urgently and I can see lots of unequivocal scars. This one is quite nasty.” he said moving his nail through the clear thickening right next to Moriarty’s wrist. “I won’t lie, I have no idea what they did to you but they perfectly knew you’re left-handed and that’s why they hit right here. And this fracture, badly healed... it has to hurt like hell when it has been broken once again, right after you managed to escape. I doubt that it was done by someone qualified, because I assume you didn’t go to a doctor’s, you told one of your men to do that and somehow I think it was a former soldier or athlete. Shortly speaking, one of your bodyguards. It got infected and when you finally called a doctor, surely a home visit, he had to break it for the third time. At least three months you had this hand completely disabled which made you mad, mostly because of the fact that one of your men was taking care of you and you were almost invalid so you couldn’t act like a tough guy with no conscience  in front of him.”

“I think it’s enough” Moriarty interrupted with a weird tone and Sherlock carefully let go of his hand.

“Am I right?” he asked staring at his faded, kind of tired face and completely dead eyes. Somehow... causing him look like this didn’t make him feel as much satisfied as he expected to.  Maybe if he beat Moriarty with his mind in some of their multithreaded games, he would feel differently but this kind of hitting pressure points reminded him of Magnussen too much. And he didn’t wanted to behave like this man.

“Almost 100%. You’re better than I remembered” Jim said and moved his hand back, embracing his knees with arms, as if he gave up pretending that he wasn’t cold. Sherlock rolled his eyes and then took off his own scarf and gloves. He gave them to Moriarty, who seemed to be clearly shocked by this gesture. “What are you doing?”

“Put these on. The second pneumonia in six months will lead you to a hospital for even a quarter and it’ll spoil our game. Alternatively, we can go back inside but I’d like to avoid that solution. My brother is already in the hospital.”

“If he’s there, he might come here as well.” Moriarty answered but obediently he tied the warmer scarf around his neck and slowly, with a little reserve, put gloves on his numb hands.

„He is too lazy to climb a ladder and his men are so stupid that even if some of them came here, they wouldn’t check all the roof. And we are not seen from the exit. Let’s go back to the point, Jim.” he smiled, delighting in another twitch. “I have some questions. About Magnussen, Janine and... obviously, _how_ did you do that? But first, more important things.”

“I’m listening.”

“These bodies... you  exaggerated.” Sherlock said shortly. “My brother would be suspected of  this because no one believes you’re still alive.” he silenced for a while and turned his head aside, to have better look at Moriarty’s face on which, once again, there was a perfect mask of a cold psycho. „But soon it will change.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“You have a spy in MI6.” he said, checking if that will make an impression on Moriarty. But he just laughed and moved a little bit closer to Sherlock.

“I’m surprised that it took you so _long_ to notice that. Tell me, if I hadn’t a spy, how would I  know about the incident at Magnussen’s?”

“How would you indeed? And it put me on the right track. And now, better part.” He smiled  spitefully. “I told Mycroft about it and maybe he already got him.”

“Interesting.” Moriarty snorted but he seemed a little tense.

“He’s working in MI6 for quite a long time. Really long. He was the informer thanks to which Molly unintentionally forged results of DNA analyses” Sherlock said and this time it made a better effect because Moriarty snapped angrily.

“I guess that our lovely Molly is recognizing him at this moment.”

“Most likely.”

“Oh well...”

“Even if she can’t recognize him, Mycroft won’t have any problems with finding out who was delivering the samples. Don’t even try to take any revenge on her. You’ll just get my brother’s attention.”

“Protocols and everything” Moriarty mumbled, shaking his head. “Pity. He was useful. Very useful. He was chasing Mycroft like a dog.”

“Was he with my brother in Savoy Hotel?” Sherlock asked a little bit coldly.

“Don’t tell me that our dear Iceman was there...!”

“Be serious” the detective snapped. “You put the bomb in that hotel on purpose because you expected Mycroft to be there. May I ask what were you trying to achieve by doing this?”

“No. You solved Janine’s riddle so nothing happened. And you will never know what would happen if you didn’t solve it. You know, Sherlock...” he move near to Sherlock and their faces were now too close to each other as for detective who started to narrow to feel that his personal space is narrowing. “You’re not quite right about that theory that after my fake suicide I was hiding for two years. Yes, I had to do that for couple of months when you’re tracking my men down, one by one... but it wasn’t a wasted time though. Remember, when you called me a spider? You inspired me back then and I spent many creative hours on reading about their webs. Everything was right. The building process is time-consuming, requires huge energy and proper material. So huge that after destroying it, spiders are able to rebuild or eat it just to regain the web, even if it would be only a part of it.”

“Interesting. It’s obvious that you didn’t rebuild your web because I’d notice it without any problems.”

“Of course. So what did I do?” he sang with amusement with no trace of the sullen mood from Sherlock's earlier deductions.

“You were destroying useless parts by yourself because I crashed them too severely.” Sherlock finished quietly and turned his eyes away when Moriarty smiled.

“They weren’t good people, you know. You don’t have to feel any guilt. You do understand why I did this, don’t you?”

“You eliminated the bosses so I couldn’t get to the roaches. And then, you started to create new structures on them, doing it in such a different way so I had no chance to find it out, basing on my previous methods.”

“Bravo! That’s why I like you so much.” he said, once again protracting some vowels and using flirting tone on sound of which Sherlock snorted shortly. “So... while you were busy with destroying my web, I was creating brand a new one. It wasn’t easy and it isn’t a secret that it’s weaker than the previous one. For now. I overestimated its strength so it what happened happened.” he closed his eyes when they were getting empty and started to wane and when he opened them again after just few seconds, they were sparkling again. “I have more men. It doesn’t work perfectly but I know much more than I did few years ago and experience is much more valuable than resources. Let’s get back to the riddle. What did I do, Sherlock? How would you describe it?”

“You made a task for me... but gave no prompt. No, you did but it was so general that I didn’t even know it was one. I was supposed to look for an answer on a question I didn’t know and you didn’t tell me what punishment waits for me if I fail” he said slowly and Moriarty nodded and smiled widely.

“Our second game.” he said melodiously, accenting every single vowel. “This is what it will be about. We both developed so the game had to move from _easy_ to _hard_ level, if it’s supposed to be fun. You have to find the clues on your own, although you don’t know the riddle and have no idea what will I do if you fail. First round, or demo maybe, was easier because I told you about a deadline and the fact that blowing something up will be a punishment. But don’t expect such facilitation this time.”

“How will I know that I’m solving your riddle?”

“Oh, _you will_.” Moriarty laughed and unexpectedly raised his hand to move it across Sherlock’s cheek. The touch of leather gloves tickled a little but Sherlock didn’t dare to twitch or stop looking into his dark, blood-shot eyes with shadows under them. “I have faith in your skills. Besides, I know that the thought that someone could die if you let yourself be an ordinary, unthinking person even for a while, will lead you to the solution. So, do you like it? I know you do” he said as he saw excitement in Sherlock’s eyes.

“One rule” he said and, though it cost him much, he  grasped Moriarty’s hand and moved it away from his own face. However, he didn’t manage to push him away so now they stayed in a weird position, bent towards each other with raised, joined hands.

“Just one” the man answered, looked at their hands and laughed shortly. Sherlock snorted and pulled back sharply, embarrassed to the bounds of possibility.

“You won’t lay your hand on John and Mary” he said coldly. “And on their child, when it will be born.”

“Those are three rules...!” Moriarty protested, insincerely sulky.

“One.” Sherlock answered. “You’ll break it and the game is over.”

“You’re really self-confident, Sherlock. So, soooo confident if you think that you’ll be able to stop our game if...”

“I’m not kidding. John and his family are untouchable.” the detective interrupted him. „Try to hurt them and Mycroft will learn about everything in exactly the same moment when I notice that they’re in danger.”

“Not fair. Very Magnussen’s style.”

“He was the only one who could beat you so this is the only way to protect them. If you involve one of them in something, I’ll tell my brother about everything to destroy you and, just in case if you’d like to play with fire just for fun, it concerns Janine as well.”

“Ouch, you’re tempting fate, Sherlock...”

“Something happens to John and she’ll pay for this” Sherlock said and smiled as he saw a fade of emotions that appeared for a second on Moriarty’s face. “It’s a fair deal, don’t you think?” he added after a while. “Pressure point for a pressure point.”

“A small one… and you dare to blackmail me in his case. I don’t even know if there’s a second person on the Earth that would have courage to do this.”

“I have my aces so I can afford to it. So, how it will be?”

“I won’t touch John. Or his murderous wife. And child. And, know my kindness, their future children, if they have any while we will be still playing, they won’t be in danger as well. Happy now?”

“How do you know...?” Sherlock started but  bit his own tongue, afraid to continue.

“About Mary? My love...” Moriarty laughed in sincere amusement. “Mary, Mary, _Mary._ She was living in London while we were playing here. I was looking at her, wondering what to do with that woman. It was _me_ who told Magnussen that we have that very interesting person right in front of our eyes” he said and when he saw that Sherlock is clenching his fists angrily, he snorted in irritation. “How would I know that she’ll be dating Johnny Boy while we weren’t here? So... do you really want me to tell you, _where_ I know her from?”

“I’m not sure. Do I...?”

“Yes. But it will be better for Johnny Boy if you didn’t tell him.” he whispered  conspiratorially and giggled in a disturbing way. “Mary. Marrryyyy. Do you know it’s not her real name?”

“She isn’t the first or the last person that changed her name and ran from the past.” Sherlock said, feeling that he simply couldn’t resist and Moriarty laughed on that.

“Yes, _riiiiight._ Do you want me to tell you?”

“I won’t stop myself from checking her if you do so _no._ ”

“If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” Moriarty winked at him and after that he took a more comfortable position and started to throw the core up, smiling weirdly. “She worked for me in East Europe.” he said suddenly with such an ordinary tone, like it wasn’t anything serious and like he didn’t notice that Sherlock got saddened after hearing those words. “She worked for me for a long, _long_ time. She was one of the first contract killers that I found on the continent and I hired her always when I had some business in that region. She was so good that I was going to... promote her, if we can call it like that. We even spoke on the phone once, when I needed to give her some precision instructions without intermediaries. And now it’s time for the best, Sherlock. Really the best.” he turned to the detective, caught the core and threw it away. “When she started dating John, she perfectly knew that it was a man whose life was ruined by her former chief. Because you know what? She was that good that the Moriarty name wasn’t unfamiliar for her. She was good...” he grinned and laughed after a while. “So good that she was almost a _part of the web._ I didn’t kill her for leaving only because I thought she’d come back and beg me on her knees to hire her back and it amused me so much.”

“But she never returned.” Sherlock said, cursing himself in his head for sounding so  uncertain.

“No, she didn’t.” Moriarty answered, not hiding a disappointment, shook his hands and leaned them on his bent knees. “And she never will, since she took your precious Johnny Boy away from you and it seems like she has feelings for him. I’m sure that the remorse for lying to him every day is devouring her from the inside and when she’ll find out that I’m alive, she’ll be horrified. But don’t worry, I’m not Magnussen and won’t try to take her down. Oh, that’s right! Magnussen. You wanted to ask about him, didn’t you? Come on, Sherlock. Let’s change the subject because on the memory of our sweet Maaaary you’re getting so sad and my heart bleeds that I’m not the one you’re jealous of. So?”

“Why didn’t you kill him?” Sherlock asked after a few seconds, trying to do it with as much  dignity as he could afford right now when his, far from happy, relationship with John was pointed out.

“Janine.” Moriarty said shortly. „Never-ending blackmailing, pressure points and connections.” he waved his hand like he was driving away some persistent fly. “They weren’t current when you killed him. Or maybe they were just a bluff.”

“So you won’t explain to me what happened?”

“It would be wasted time, nothing interesting, seriously” he said coldly. “Anything else?”

“How did Janine manage to quit her job in his office?”

“Oh, don’t you know that? I thought you guessed or maybe that Janine told you.” He looked at Sherlock expectantly but the detective stayed silent. “He fired her after you broke into his office. The same day, actually.”

“And, obviously, you claim that she had no idea about your connection with Magnussen.” Sherlock answered and Moriarty just clenched his lips. “Unbelievable. You had the whole litany to tell about Mary and yet you don’t want to talk about your beloved sister?”

“Pressure points. Do you want to talk with me about John?” he asked and snorted because Sherlock’s silence was more than meaningful. “On the other hand, it isn’t always like this. You’re my pressure point, just like Janine and I was talking with her about you maaaaaaany times” he extended the last syllables in a mocking way. “It needed lots of wine every time but, all in all, we were able to talk about it.”

“Is it possible that your skills of making friends with women didn’t work on Janine?”

“It would be kinda difficult to enchant my younger sister by fake romanticism. Besides, she has a different taste in men.”

“So  a relationship with me was a bad choice.” Sherlock pointed out. “As far as I remember, you said we are the same.”

“Oh well, we usually are” Moriarty said carefully and the detective assumed that he had thought on the tip of his tongue that he acts differently when he is with Janine and he makes her believe that this is the true version of him. He smiled a little, trying to remember that moment when Moriarty hesitated, it somehow was a confirmation of his theory. “But I doubt that includes relations with women. _Virgin._ It speaks for itself.”

“You’re the second person in England that didn’t believe in Janine’s sensations from papers.”

“Please, _Seven times during one night on Baker Street?_ ” he snorted mockingly. “I’m omitting someone from the outside but it’s really weird that people who know _you_ believed in that. By the way, do you _really_ want to talk about her after what she was telling about you?”

“I don’t blame her and she doesn’t blame me. We settled everything between us and the subject is closed.”

“Because I was thinking...” Moriarty continued as if he didn’t hear Sherlock. “Most of the guys would be proud if a woman told such things about them, even with those _he took advantage of me, he was heartless_ , bla bla bla... But you...” he looked at him carefully. “I doubt you want to be seen like this. As a _hot, unsatisfied stud_.”

“Till today I’m receiving at least a few propositions a day of one-night stands” he admitted, not hiding his disgust.

“Don’t you even consider them?” Moriarty asked in amusement, for what Sherlock looked at him with pity. “What would you do if I wrote you such a message? _Dear Sherlock, I’m your biggest fan. I was admiring you long before you became famous and I dream about meeting you. Let’s meet on the Barts roof and then I’ll show you my apartment._ How about that?”

“My fans are more straightforward.”

“Should I try? But I have to warn you, sex-chat isn’t my strongest suit.”

“So don’t.”

“And let’s get straight to the point?”

“You really like to tease me about this, don’t you?”

“You have no idea.” he said and, unexpectedly finishing this quick exchange of views, he stood up. “All in all, I wish she didn’t tell the truth because if you were _easier,_ I’d have better chances with you. But... whatever.” he laughed awkwardly, staring down at the still sitting Sherlock and the detective was almost 100% sure that Jim sees in that position rather obvious innuendo. “I think it’s time for me to go. Thanks for this” he pointed at Sherlock’s scarf and because a stronger wind started to blow, he wrapped himself with a coat what made him look so tiny and weak like he was about to fall over because of stronger gust; it totally ruined the effect that he tried to make, looking at Sherlock the way he did. “I’ll contact you soon...but not too soon so you could take care of the cases that those losers from Scotland Yard can’t solve by themselves.”

“Thank you for your permission but I already have my own case” Sherlock said and, after a while, he added casually. “A travelling one. Maybe I will go to Ireland in the near future. You know, not to stuck in London, waiting for our next meeting.”

“Ireland. What a beautiful country.” Moriarty said, accenting all words in an exaggerated way. “I lived there for a long time.”

“I can hear that.” the detective commented it shortly and stood up as well. “I’ll go first and let you know if it’s... safe. However I assume that you know the passages of which even the architects of this building have no idea.”

“Though it doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be grateful for warning me with some text if anybody waits for me downstairs.”

“You want me to believe that you came here with no backup?” Sherlock asked and Moriarty only smiled in an answer.

“See you soon, Sherlock.”

Detective nodded his head and he was just about to shake his hand when gave up this idea; too many memories, so much that he wouldn’t dare to bring them back with one gesture; he turned away and walked towards exit and when he got to a wall from behind of which Jim couldn’t see him, he looked over his shoulder to glance at the man who was  muffling up by his scarf. Sherlock closed his eyes for a moment and took few faster steps, afraid that if he will look at him a little bit longer, he may do something... weird. Though he wasn’t able to specify what it would be.

Reaching the room where he left his things didn’t cause any problems because the halls were completely empty, not counting a cleaning lady and two gossiping nurses, who couldn’t be any danger and they didn’t even notice him. He opened a desk and took his phone. As soon as he turned it on, he texted a short message that everything's all clear. He didn’t think even for a moment about the fact that to the long list of broken rules (caused by his meeting with Moriarty and chatting with him about plans of playing with human life, like they were old friends) joined another one: helping in hiding a criminal, wanted by Secret Service.

 _XXX_ he read later and he just couldn’t help a stupid smile that was caused by those three, seemingly meaningless letters.

***

Sherlock knew perfectly well that his brother will spend long hours of hard work and he didn’t expect Mycroft to visit him until the next day, after he’ll spend the night on hushing up cases of killed bodyguards and interrogating a spy. Theoretically, it was a possibility that Moriarty will warn this man but after Jim’s reaction on the fact that his spy was captured, Sherlock considered that Moriarty wrote him off. He was almost sure that at the latest tomorrow he’ll read about mysterious accident in a prison – no one knows anything, no witnesses and all measures that were supposed to keep the prisoner alive – failed. Suicide was possible as well because someone who was working as a double agent for such a long time, had to know what will happen to him when spying on government will be proven to him; however if he’d like to cooperate and will tell Moriarty’s secrets – he’d pass a sentence on himself. Even the most primitive criminal network of someone like this spy had to have some strong bonder and the first thing that was included to it was a horde of well trained contract killers.

 _Mary._ Sherlock waved his hand impatiently but he simply couldn’t push away the vision of his friend’s wife who is performing Moriarty’s orders. Of course, he was aware of what she was doing in the past for a long time and he knew what Jim is capable of but connection of those two made the case more personal and because of that he couldn’t just look at it with no emotions. He clenched his fist and, although he previously planned to go straight to Baker Street, he changed his mind and told a taxi-driver to go to the area where Bill lived.

Bill opened his door straight away, like he was expecting detective and he didn’t seem to be overly frightened or offended. Although they came back to London in silence, it seemed that when Bill was surrounded by his own four walls, he wasn’t blaming Sherlock for making him listen to the stories that made him feel sick.

“Coffee or tea?” he asked with so typical for him, bored voice. That made Sherlock confirmed in the fact that they came back to their earlier, hard to define but still positive and _almost_ friendly relations.

“Tea, if you have milk.” the detective answered and went to the living-room. He turned the TV on to check if there’s any information about bodies delivered to Barts; all stations kept silent about it and on BBC news some journalist was talking with a wide smile on her face about a hunting dog that drowned in a river.

“I’ll order some pizza as well...” Bill shouted from the kitchen.

“Not hungry.”

“I know, I’m just saying.” he answered and came back to the living-room after a few minutes. He leaned on a chair vis-a-vis Sherlock, staring at his own hands for a while. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you, Shezza.” he said and rigidity with which he spoke those words were proof that he was processing them in his head long enough to make them sound unnaturally. “I’m not leaving London. No trips or meetings with this psycho. I can look for anything you want on the Internet. Actually, I already started. I can pass the information from the homeless...”

“Recall them.”

“What...?”

“Recall the homeless.” detective repeated coldly. “They were supposed to look for anything connected with Moriarty’s show. But now, since we know that he is alive, I don’t want them to expose themselves to danger.”

“You saw him today.” Bill asked or maybe just said, which surprised Sherlock. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m good at deductions and you’re so self-confident that don’t even bother to hide the obviousness. You should do better when you see your brother.”

“I’ll keep that in my mind.” Sherlock answered with a disapproving smile and meaningfully looked towards the kitchen where water for tea was boiling. He waited until Bill went there to make the tea and when a small tray with a kettle and two cups was put on the table, he spoke again. “Wanna hear what I found out?”

“With not too much details.” Bill moaned reluctantly. “So I guess you checked that period when he came back to London?”

“Yes” Sherlock answered leaning forward over the table. “Yes, but let’s begin from the start” he said and coldly, without any details, he summarized his talk with Mycroft from before yesterday, then his conclusions about Moriarty’s activity when he was nine and lived in Brighton and finally – told everything he knew about his parents. When Bill heard about Jim’s mother’s and four other people’s deaths, his face turned green but he didn’t comment it in any way; probably because of the fact that he forgot for a moment how to use his tongue. “Moriarty thought it over. He was hushing up all the bonds and when he was a teenager, he tried to be unseen so no one could remember him. He can do that. Even I didn’t notice him, just like he planned.”

“I hope those were the only bloody sensation that...”

“I only told you that he killed them but, believe me, I know more details. But back to the point... Mycroft gave me the files of three people, arrested in Barts three years ago. Loose bonds with Moriarty,  exemplary life style, no criminal records, just ordinary people. One of them turned out to be from Brighton and...?” He silenced for a while and Bill rolled his eyes because this not finished question offended his intelligence.

“Was attending the same school as Moriarty.” he finished for him. “And those two others?”

“We will check them in a while because I didn’t have time to do it by myself. But I’m almost sure that they have some connections to young Jim, that they had no idea who he really was, that they didn’t realize that the purpose of their ‘visit’ there was completely different than they thought.”

“What _was_ the purpose?”

“Don’t know but I will find it out next time when I’ll meet with Moriarty” Sherlock said shrugging like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Bill winced as he heard that name but said no word.

“Do you  allow for a possibility that they were doing nonsense things like delivering files or that their presence there was some kind of backup plan that, eventually, wasn’t fulfilled?” he asked instead.

“Most surely it was the last one. But now it’s irrelevant.”

“Is it possible that all those three men were somehow connected with Moriarty’s past and this backup plan... uhm... was  based on confirming his other identity?” Bill said without much thinking. Sherlock froze and sighed noiselessly because the idea wasn’t that bad; obviously, it required checking those two men but he planned to do this anyway and, actually, he intended to do this as fast as it was possible. “Finish the story about Hooper, this doll from Barts and after that...”

“ _Doll_ ” Sherlock mumbled but he gave up any commenting about this term describing Molly. Not to waste time, he summarized what happened in a morgue and a talk with his friend in 3 sentences because now, when he had new goal, he wanted to let Bill know about everything as soon as it was possible. Telling about all these things took him such a short time that Bill didn’t even get to look like vomiting, when he heard about other corpses, or comment Molly’s and Mycroft’s lack of perceptibility. “And then I met with Moriarty but I’ll tell you about it later. Turn your computer on and let’s get to work.”

“Wait. Before...” he silenced when Sherlock threw a laptop into his hands. “Don’t you wanna know what I found out?”

“It can wait. Check your mail, I’m sending you the first one...”

“It concerns this girl. Molly Hooper” he said, successfully drawing Sherlock’s attention. He hurriedly wrote a password to his computer. “When we were in that school in Brighton... I kinda do some research on my own but I didn’t want to boast about it, just in case if nothing turned out of it...” Bill said and Sherlock frowned in answer. When after a while Bill gave him a couple of documents taken from the floor, a wide smile appeared on his face.

“Complete list of students from 1989. The statement of the scholarship committee.” _brilliant –_ he had this word on the tip of his tongue but he didn’t say it aloud.

“I started to check them alphabetically. I didn’t dig too deep, just general information, besides, I wasn’t able to find everyone on Facebook or other social portals. I crossed the names that I considered unimportant and marked only place of current stay... those marked yellow means not enough information, pink – I didn’t find and green...” Bill silenced and waited for Sherlock to look at the marks.

“Corey Butler. He’s the son...”

“Of the woman we met” Bill answered proudly. “Remember when she said that her sons were trying to make friends with Moriarty? I decided to check them both more  carefully. His brother, Mark, is clean. A manager of lower lever in Brighton Insurance Group, Civic – 2 years, regular visits on gym, wife – teacher – and two children. But Corey... you’ll never guess where he is working...” he grinned and clicked something twice on his laptop and turned it for a moment to Sherlock to show him a profile on LinkedIn.

“Barts Hospital...”

“What before that? A small, minor clinic in the  suburbs of Brighton and extra hours in emergency service. But now it’s time for the best. To get to that I had to contrive a lot. In April Corey vanished, simply disappeared for two months. All his accounts and profiles were inactive in that time and believe me, I checked all of them and there were lots of them. Weird that a doctor has time for such things... After that I hacked his mailbox and found some mails in which his friends tried to contact him. He was answering everyone at the same time, something about half of June, a message that he had a _private task abroad,_ \- don’t know if it’s truth – and that he just came back to the world of living. I copied everything if you were interested. And now there best of it... a lame orthopaedist, I know it because I read some opinions of his patients, working in the middle of nowhere, surely not earning too much, suddenly vanishes. And when he came back, he got a job of deputy head of orthopaedics ward  in a hospital in London, bought a house in the suburbs of the city, quite nice car and cat, which is on his profile photo by the way, what I consider a little bit perverted.”

“To the point, Bill.” Sherlock hurried him, as he began to understand why that showing off with his knowledge in front of the people who don’t have it is so annoying. And in a one second something clicked in his head. “Repeat, where did he buy...?”

“House in the suburbs, a car, a cat...?”

“Cat, cat, cat... a cat!” Sherlock mumbled. “Molly!”

“This is what I wanted to tell you. Because you see, a little bird told me that Corey Butler is dating some pathologist that you know very well.” He grinned, took his laptop and sat on a couch, next to Sherlock. “Look. Yesterday they both changed their status on ‘in a relationship’.”

“I can’t believe he’s that guy...”  the detective mumbled, taking a laptop from Bill and opening the last photo that Corey uploaded, on which he was with Molly, Thames in the background. The woman still didn’t seem to be interested in him but, because of the dampness, his hair became curly and he had a long coat... It didn’t look like the one Sherlock used to wear but with curly hair and navy-blue, sparkling shirt he was like an aphrodisiac, satisfactory for her enough to embrace him.

“Did you see him before?”

“He was in my place on New Year’s Eve.” Sherlock  extracted those words, paralysed by this discovery. “He was the one who told Moriarty what I was doing and that I contriving well by searching in Sussex...” he frowned, trying to recreate New Year’s evening. “But he heard about Sussex from me when I was talking with Mycroft and the text from Moriarty came earlier... But... wait...” he silenced, stubbornly trying to remind himself about some details. “I went to change and pull myself together, which took something about a quarter, maybe twenty minutes. During that time John was cleaning up my living-room and before I left the room, all guests were already there and it’s possible that this guy noticed that I had turned on one of my laptops. But it’s ridiculous though, Corey actually was in love with Molly, no doubt so what...”

“Maybe Moriarty told him to follow her and falling in love was just a side effect?”

“It wouldn’t make any sense.”

“ _Irene Adler_ ” Bill said which made Sherlock silence. “Back to this guy... check this out.” He opened his photo album of a trip from two years ago: France, just as Sherlock suspected when he was deducing him. “ _Look_ ” Bill said with a slight pressure and the detective almost rubbed his eyes in disbelief; the guy in the photo was wearing jeans and really awful shirt with flowers - a taste even worse than John’s – his hair was short, blond and he had a strong, artificial tan. “And now his current version.” He moved back to his recent photos, in which Corey was wearing silk shirts, a custom-made suit and had longer but still bright hair. No Latino tan.

“Moriarty remade him for her” Sherlock said, still in shock. “They were somewhere together, he got a lot of cash and new image that he was supposed to keep. Moriarty trained him so good that I didn’t see anything suspicious in him and...” he grabbed his own hair and pulled them angrily. “Everything is right. Moriarty was captured a year ago, he escaped after a while, sick and broken and when he realized that his condition is too weak to avoid doctors, he dug Corey Butler from his past.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about but with his money and acquaintances, Moriarty had to have a lot of possibilities to get some medical treatment...”

“He couldn’t go to the hospital, even a private one, because he is still a wanted man and if someone recognised him, he’d be arrested and this time with no way out. Remember, his condition  was really bad, mental as well... he didn’t have his _own_ doctors because when I was destroying his network, I cancelled a secret clinic, where he was treating his bodyguards if they got hurt during some operations. It’s most possible that he put there all of his doctors and when Mycroft arrested them for taxes, because it was the easiest way, Jim actually had no one to turn to and he needed someone _really_ trusted because he was in _really_ bad shape.”

“Well... this loser was a bad choice.”

“A doctor is a doctor, after all. But let’s move on... Corey meets Moriarty and treats him for some time because Jim has to handle pneumonia and a bad healed fracture of his left hand. They are in England and he watches everything that happens around me out of the closet. Jim knows Molly very well, he surely finds out that she’s dating some guy who looks like me. He knows she isn’t too committed to this relationship so he decides to bring her a _better match_. Corey is pulling him out of physical breakdown and Moriarty is training him how to make Molly fall in love with him and cheat _me_! Ha!” he clapped his hands so suddenly that Bill jumped on his seat. “Another ace in a pocket. Moriarty has no clue that I know about his past so he can’t know that I’m aware who Molly’s boyfriend is.”

“Shezza...”

“It’s only a beginning of the game and I’m already 5 steps ahead of him. It’s just fantastic!”

“What are you talking about...?”

“About a new game. The second game. Moriarty wants to play with me again. To dance...” He laughed in excitement. “It will be unforgettable. I can’t wait...”

“Shezza!” Bill shouted, finally making Sherlock quiet. “Tell me, honestly...  putting aside your today’s date with that psycho. Are you excited _like a child_ because this time you have a tool to destroy him for real or maybe there’s something I don’t understand...”

“What’s not to understand?”

“When you’re talking about him, you  squeak like a teenage girl who’s talking about the most popular boy at school, who unexpectedly asked her to go with him to a ball” he said with strange mix of outrage  and mockery in his voice. “I saw him in Brighton. He’s a weird, pathological and horrifying psycho who kills with such an easiness as he breathes. You seem to be into that but I’m disgusted with him and I really can’t understand why...”

“Why am I so interested in playing with him? I told you before” Sherlock interrupted him with irritation, that he couldn’t even understand. “When your pressure point is eating you, you cure it by another one. Not healthy, but still effective.”

“Whatever was your previous weakness, I’m sure it was better than him.”

“Yes, it _was_ but now it’s unavailable and will stay out of reach. Forever” he answered, waiting for a pressure in his chest, unpleasant tingling sensation, _a draught_ , anything connected with sudden thought about John.

Nothing. Not even an inch moving, not the slightest sound in the lungs.

Replacement of pressure points became faster and easier than he thought. He had no idea what to think about it, or how  pitiful will be the result of it. The only thing that he realized right now was the fact that a couple days ago he started to cure a weed addiction with heroin.

***

The band of failures followed after his previous successes in Internet searching and hunting Moriarty down by people that he used to know. Sherlock and Bill started their investigation from two men captured in Barts. Their files were delivered by Mycroft but although they spent over those document almost 3 hours, they didn’t find anything significant, no starting point, no place that could be somehow connected with little Jim or his family. One of the men was living in the USA and moved to England 6 years ago because, how it turned out, his wife  acquired the legacy of her aunt. They had some trail but every idea ended with a blind alley or explanation so primitively obvious that there was no point in digging any deeper. The second man was born and raised in London, he studied here and got a job. The only thing that seemed to be deviation from the norm was a fact that – Sherlock found it out by following his IP – he was a regular client of several clubs for adults only and appeared in two amateur porn movies, which he shared with occasional lovers which he met on one-night-stand portals. A chance that an occasional sex was the thing that related him with Moriarty was close to 0, all the more, the information about his conquests was mentioned in Mycroft’s report and whatever was in those documents, had to be carefully verified by his men.

“We don’t know what Moriarty did or where he lived during the time between high school and the moment you two met for the first time” Bill said and Sherlock hardly stopped himself from snapping at his friend to spare such  obviousness. “So, to be honest, if we look blindly for something that we don’t even know what is is...”

“We find nothing and even if there will be anything – will be found  accidentally. We have to go back to his childhood and teenage period because that’s the only moment where we have some start point. The strong and only one of which my brother has no idea and which wasn’t verified by him.” he said, rising his hand. “Give me that list. I’ll start from the end and you continue what you were doing before.”

“Did Mycroft investigate Carl’s Powers case?”

“No because I never told him that it was related to Moriarty’s case. You and John are the only people, except for me, that knows about Powers. Go back to work. I want to finish it as soon as it is possible and take care of more interesting things.”

“Which are...?”

“To pick up the trail or go to Ireland. I’d rather do the first one however I’m afraid that covering the trails isn’t such a challenge and the only thing I’ll find there will be information about his mother's life. It is possible that there are more interesting news but finding them out won’t be easy, maybe impossible.”

“I think there’s no point in going there.” Bill said. “Actually, you already know the most important things. He was thinking about the revenge for destroying his childhood for years and finally he killed that woman and disappeared. You know what caused his damages, you know how he started in Brighton and you know why he is so obsessed about Janine and probably his father and stepmother...” he silenced when Sherlock looked at him weirdly. “The mainstay of his fucked up normality” he said like he was explaining something to a little child. “When I look at this all coldly, without any emotions, like you usually do, it was quite logical that he committed that murder, killing people who took his childhood and normality away. He was able to kill when he was ten, so it is quite possible that he did that again when he was 18. And then he simply vanished. There’s the whole story of Moriarty in Clane.”

“But before he did that... he had to have some network in Clane.” Sherlock answered thoughtfully. “I want to know about everything that happened to him before he changed his name. He surely wasn’t Moriarty back then, believe me. Both me and Mycroft did overview and it’s certain that someone with such name appeared not more than 10 years ago and at the very beginning he didn’t want to be seen... But he started to create his network earlier, Molly’s boyfriend and those three guys captured in Barts is proof. I think...” he silenced for a long while, losing his plot for few seconds and trying to understand the vague visions that flooded his head. “What do you think about the theory that he was creating new masks for all those years and he was recruiting people wearing each of those masks? We got to two people from primary school but there may be some more. In Brighton he was known as a weird, quiet kid who was tormented but on the other hand, he turned out to be a genius of manipulation. Ms Butler said he was cute and kind and maybe those people, recruited by him, thought the same way. Another, surely completely different face he had in Clane. Basing on fragments of what that journalist, Flynn, was saying, I conclude that in Clane, during the whole high-school period, he tried to be quiet and unseen, he didn’t threaten his peers or get into trouble. This was the time of an invisible mask... You know what? I think I’ll actually go to Clane and find his school because maybe...”

“He could have attended a high-school in Dublin.” Bill interrupted and Sherlock froze and shortly nodded his head.

“And if so, finding him would be a miracle, because if I don’t know where exactly I should  be looking, like it was in Brighton, there are no chance to find anything. I won’t be searching all schools that existed, especially if we know that all files and photos were deleted by him. But it can be a good... trail, though. If I just can find only one Irish man amongst his people...” he gasped with anger, looking at the lists that at exactly this moment couldn’t be very helpful. “I was almost sure that one of these guys from Mycroft’s documents will lead me to something. But let’s get back to Moriarty’s faces, in Clane, in high-school he wanted to be invisible but somewhere in Dublin...” he frowned in absolute concentration. “Listen, his grandfather, that politician-businessman, he probably was influential and had the opportunity to get him false papers, with which he went to high school. We don’t know what their relations were like before Moriarty killed him. We don’t know what kind of man he was but there’s a chance that somehow he was manipulated by Jim. So let’s assume that when he was attending high-school, Moriarty was living in Clane but most of his time he was spending in school in Dublin, as a completely different man. We don’t know which mask he was wearing back then but the more I think about it, the more sure I am that it was the time when he started to create his network. Slowly but successively he was looking for people that could be useful for him and so he was building the bounds with them to...”

“Sorry but how do you think he was doing that?” Bill interrupted him skeptically. “He couldn’t just say to anybody: ‘hey, I’m going to be or already am a consulting-criminal and I need lots of people that are ready to do everything for me unless they want to be shorted by a head’.”

“He wouldn’t do such thing, not back then” Sherlock answered, ignoring this clear irony. “Before he became a Moriarty, he surely played with people in a little bit softer way. He wasn’t a sadistic criminal to them but a  programmer, something like a prototype of _Jim from IT,_ a university lecturer about which Ms Butler was informed by Janine, a taxi-driver, because I saw him in that role, or someone else. Most of them are most probably nothing more than spies like my homeless network, they didn’t have to do anything illegal, they were simply connected with him and they were, or maybe still are, his eyes and ears. Or maybe he uses them for common, practical things – like this doctor. By the way...” he laughed shortly, reminding himself one more thing. “Did you know that he actually had a website with fairy tales? I have them on my disc. All of them.”

“If you’re trying to tell me that you listen to them for better sleep...” Bill started and  winced. “It gives me the creeps to even think about his voice.”

“Because you know Moriarty as a consulting-criminal and he  terrifies you. If someone doesn’t know he is a psycho, they can think he has a really nice voice.” He got lost in his thoughts for a while and then he clapped his hands, considering that there’s enough of idle talk. “Let’s leave his teenage and later operations under different masks, however interesting they would be.” he took one of the pages and nodded at Bill. “Get to work. Next break after...” he looked at a clock, realizing in shock that it was something about 9 p.m. „3 hours.”

“I’ll order another pizza...” the younger man sighed, peeking in  resignation at the list of people they were supposed to check.

“Two.” Sherlock said, googling the first name. “It will be a long night and when we finish, I’ll need some fuel.”

His words turned out to be  prophetic. They spent night, drinking a lot of coffee, more and more frustrated and tired, staring at screen with bloodshot eyes. The sun was already rising and they didn’t do even a half of what they planned to and the list of people they perfunctorily checked and were supposed to lead them to something interesting, was pitifully short. This one with people they didn’t find a word about, was longer and longer and Sherlock still had no idea what to do with it and if there’s even a point of coming back to it.

Something about nine a.m. Bill  capitulated, refusing any work if he won’t get to sleep for at least four hours. Sherlock snorted in irritation and kept searching but – although he was pretending that it wasn’t a truth – he was more and more tired as well. At midday, when he wasn’t able to fight tiredness anymore, he lied on a couch and slept for 45 minutes, curled up in an uncomfortable position; when he woke up, he was even more tired than before and felt that in a moment all stories of people from primary school of Brighton will blow up his head.

Standing next to open window, he smoked two cigarettes and went to wake up Bill who got  out of his bed unwillingly but quite hasty. He said that without something to stimulate, he’ll be unable to continue working. Sherlock’s warning glance did not allow him to open the cabinet of illegal pharmaceuticals, so with a ponderous step he went to the store for the pack of energy drinks and ten minutes later, with a tin in his hand, he returned to work. They got stuck in that till evening, looking through social portals, forums and different websites, writing down contacts, addresses, companies and their own conclusions but those were more and more chaotic and meaningless.

“Sherlock, let’s leave it for today...” Bill was moaning  but each time he heard that _there were still only a hundred, seventy, thirty... ten names left._ ”We’re working on this over twenty four hours non-stop.”

“Ten people. And that’s all. I’ll go back to my place, get some sleep and start to look  through...” he pointed at a list of 20 chosen people but silenced, rubbing his tired eyes.

“You can sleep here.”

“Thanks, but...”

“I’ll give you clean sheets and I promise I won’t enter the bedroom” he said but Sherlock shook his head. “You do realize that on Baker Street Mycroft or the doctor can visit you?”

“If they want something from me...”

“They would call you on your phone that was ringing seven times since yesterday and now it’s dead, and considering the fact that, as you always  boast about, you excluded it from under Mycroft’s surveillance...” at this moment detective snorted shortly. “It’s possible that he can’t find you. So?”

“Let me finish it.” Sherlock mumbled but when he  stroke the last name off a list a quarter later – a girl died in car accident, right after graduation – he was so tired and numb that right after eating two cold pizza pieces he let Bill take him to the only one bedroom and he fell asleep even before his head hit the pillow.

***


	8. Mycroft

***

As it usually happened after such a marathon of solving a case, Sherlock was sleeping much longer than during the other nights – this time it was a 8 full hours. When he opened his eyes, he felt like they were burning him with fire, which wasn’t really strange, considering the fact of how many hours he spent in a dimly lit room, staring at the screen of a computer. He stretched and moaned; his back muscles were in terrible condition, though it was better than his eyes. He felt dirty, wearing clothes that he didn’t change for almost 48 hours and still too sleepy, as if his brain didn’t wake up yet. He needed a coffee, though he overdosed it last night for sure. And a cigarette, definitely.

He left Bill’s bedroom, thinking only about a dose of those two stimulants, commonly accepted by society, and about the moment when he’ll finally find himself in his own apartment, taking a shower and wearing a fresh, clean bathrobe after that. And that’s why, when he saw a guest that his friend, willingly or not, had to let in, Sherlock moaned without embarrassment.

“Mycroft...”

“Hello, brother mine.” the man smiled insincerely and pointed a chair in front of himself. “When I heard that you woke up, I asked your friend to leave.”

“His own apartment? Nice.” he muttered, looking for cigarettes; only after a while he realized that he still had them in his own pocket.

“We need to talk, Sherlock. With no witnesses.”

“I’d rather put this off, until I’ll pull myself together in the shelter of Baker Street.” he said quietly but, looking at Mycroft’s face, he realized that he’d achieve nothing, _not this time,_ so he just decided to let it go and, obediently, took a place vis-a-vis Mycroft. “Fine. Let’s get it started then. How did it go with Magnussen’s bodyguard?”

“ _Oh, great!_ ” Mycroft mumbled ironically. “Do you realize how much it took me to hush it up?”

„How much? Well, well, you can put that to your exercise list.” Sherlock mocked; his brother squinted his eyes but didn’t comment it with a single word.         

“The MI6 chiefs are getting insane and they already started to think, quite rightly, that Moriarty’s show has something to do with that case. They’re demanding you to finally get to work.” he continued. „We managed to keep the reporters away, although they’re sniffing like hyenas. This unspecified information about three bodies delivered to Barts has leaked to the press, though we did our best to prevent this. Lestrade is driving me crazy with asking about explanations because he had to lie to his own people and chiefs as well and John is so mad at you about the whole disappearing that I strongly recommend you not to show yourself to him for at least a month.”

“So you came here to complain?” the detective asked ironically, reaching for his lighter with which he started to twiddle between his fingers, slightly stiff from the long hours of tapping on the keyboard. „Forgive me, brother mine, but in my current condition I simply can’t strike out of me any empathy or give you my shoulder so you could cry into it.”

“You never do that so don’t bother.” Mycroft snapped. “End of this crap. I was able to handle it somehow. But next time, maybe I won’t have such a luck, if you hide something from me...”

“Hide what?”

“ _What_ indeed.”

“You started all this.”

“Sherlock!” Mycroft raised his voice, took some of the papers that were lying on a table – papers with notes of Sherlock’s and Bill’s Internet investigation – and shook them. “Let’s start with it. What is this?”

“Sentimental journey. You remember the Carl Powers case. I was eight when I heard about it so I decided to refresh my memory. I still think that there’s something... weird about it” he said with such an insincerely reverie that Mycroft completely lost his patience and threw those papers at him. “Oh. You could be a little bit more careful with those. It’s a really fascinating case.” Sherlock said and calmly picked the documents up from the floor and couch, gathering them together, not bothering to segregate them.

“Are you trying to make me look like an idiot?”

“I’m trying to make you look like an annoying intruder who puts his too long nose in other people’s business. I told you before and I’ll say it one more time: I won’t let you know about anything until the case will be closed. That’s it. If you don’t have any news for me, we can just end this conversation right now.”

“News?” Mycroft gasped, outraged by his impudence. “YOU are the one who should have news for me. You...”

“I informed you about the killed bodyguards and a spy as soon as I found it out. I probably saved the whole country and your good name. So deign to show some gratitude because, honestly, I didn’t have to do that. By the way, I want complete documents of that man because I think I can use them to...”

“It’s a government secret.” Mycroft interrupted him with malicious satisfaction. “And this isn’t your concern anymore.”

“So I understand you won’t even thank me for giving you the information about a spy.”

“ _Thank you_ ” he said with neglectful tone. “You only told me things that the law obliges you to tell. Concealing such information, I’m telling about a spy in Secret Service, would be a high treason. I protected you so you didn’t have a trial about the murder but if someone found out that you’re concealing such thing, even my above-average causal powers wouldn’t bring any help. And believe me, they won’t bring it if my suspicions about what are you doing turn out to be true.”

“Oh, I’m dying to hear what are those.” Sherlock snapped and wrenched from his trouser pocket a pack of cigarettes, rumpled after the sleepless night, and lit ostentatiously one of them just to blow the first portion of smoke straight into Mycroft’s face. “Go on.” he encouraged Mycroft, hoping that he will grimace at least, but his brother stayed still.

“We checked Moriarty’s phone” the man said as soon as the cloud of smoke was dispersed. “It was well secured so it took a little bit more time than I planned. But not so much that I’d find it impossible.” he smacked his tongue and paused for a while, as if he was trying to build tension but Sherlock responded to it with a disregarded snort. “It’s active” Mycroft said. “There were a few times when we almost managed to track him down.”

“Wonderful” the detective said indifferently. “And what does it prove, instead of the fact that three years ago one of his men grabbed the phone from the roof of Barts and began to use it after that show from before few days ago?”

“Are you mocking me?”

“Guess.”

“He’s _alive_.” Mycroft snapped. “He’s alive and was in Barts just yesterday, the trials of tracking him down prove that. And you were with him, brother mine. Right in front of my eyes!”

“You have a vivid imagination.” Sherlock mumbled and moved his hand so he could look at the part of his cigarette that was reduced to ashes. “And maybe you’ll tell me that I met him on the roof of Barts? Like it was another _sentimental journey_?” he continued with an equally neutral, slightly ironic tone, wondering how long it would take him to bring his brother to fury. Obviously he knew that Mycroft found out the truth and it was no point in lying to him... however it was way too amusing to resign from such a fun.

“You won’t get away with this, Sherlock.” Mycroft snapped as if he was reading his mind. “Are we going to talk like grown ups or do you plan to make a fool of me and yourself?”

“What else can I tell you, my dear brother, if you claim that you already know everything?” he asked with false innocence. “You should confess to me where this idea came from that I was on a date with Moriarty while you were interrogating poor Molly.”

“From the fact that you disappeared just after realizing, during a conversation with this wretched girl, that the documents about his death were forged by false evidence. Right after that you logged in your website as an administrator and you were using your forum for something about ten minutes while a user with meaningful nick XXX was already logged. And then you simply vanished, turned your phone off and when you turned it on after an hour, you still were somewhere in the hospital” he said and Sherlock congratulated him such shrewd observation. “Just when I realized that you disappeared, leaving this whole mess to me, I went on the roof, and believe me, you don’t have to be a genius to notice that the entrance was recently opened and two people used it.”

“I’m sure it was someone of technical crew.” Sherlock said, wanting to lead this conversation a little bit longer and find out what his brother was doing, not wanting to give away his own position.

“I sent my men to check this.” Mycroft interrupted. “A charwoman confirmed that she saw two men, walking through the highest floor but she thought it was someone from the police so she didn’t pay any attention.”

“Oh, so a guy who looked like a _policeman_ was supposed to be Moriarty?” Sherlock laughed, honestly amused. “I promise that as soon as our dear Jim will be resurrected I’ll actually meet him and I’ll do this only to see his face when he’ll hear about that theory.”

“The description fit you perfectly.”

“A phenomenal beauty with curly hair and a tired corpse with a huge hole in its skull?”

“SHERLOCK!” Mycroft shouted, finally losing his patience. “That’s enough! You perfectly know, as well as me, that he’s alive and since you told me...”

“...that I’m _almost_ sure not that he _surely_ is alive.” Sherlock interrupted.

“...that Molly will help me to find the spy and she straight away admitted that she unintentionally forged the results” the man finished, ignoring his words. “If he is alive, and he _has to be_ , it’s obvious that all messages are from him, same as those damn three bodies with X’s cut by a fruit knife!”

“Mycroft! Such a language, in front of your younger, innocent brother? Mommy would be devastated.”

“Not more than if she found out that you met this psychopath!” he shouted and then took a deep breath, closing his eyes. Clearly he was counting to ten, just to calm himself, because when he spoke after that, he was quieter, in typical for him, cold way. “Sherlock, I know you did this. Despite of your childish mocking, I was suspecting it before and now I’m sure. You’re showing it by every single gesture you make, you’re not even trying to _pretend_ that it’s different. I know that you’re looking for something in Brighton as well, in fact, you still are. That you’re planning something foolish and getting yourself into trouble with premeditation. I want to know, at least more or less, what’s going on just to...”

“To what?” Sherlock asked and Mycroft clearly faltered, looking away.

“To get myself prepared and have a chance to save you when you’ll do something idiotic which will get you into trouble.”

“I’m not a _princess_ that needs to be saved.” Sherlock answered, not expecting such a declaration from his brother, who almost never so... openly and unequivocally admitted that Sherlock actually is his pressure point and that he’s willing to break the law for him and bend all the rules.

“Neither a _dragon slayer_ , as it turned out.”

“Oh, so which role are you giving me in this fairy tale?” the detective laughed.

“An insane, young witch that seeks for adventures in the wrong places.” Mycroft answered without any thinking, like he was prepared for this answer before.

“In the dragon’s cave?” Sherlock asked, slightly leaning forward.

“More like in a web of a magic spider, that enchanted her, turning into a handsome prince.” the older man sighed, tired and kind of depressed. A clear grimace appeared on his face and a moment later the man rubbed his left temple in a woebegone gesture.

“So who are _you_ supposed to be?”

“Your big wizard brother, who is afraid that his stupid witch-sister will get herself ensnared once again by this monster and she won’t even realize when it’ll happen.”

“Cute. You should write it down and send to Moriarty, maybe he will make of it an audiobook for children. You’ll make a fortune” he mocked, then hummed and extinguished his cigarette in the full ashtray. Although he had a lot of fun during this conversation, he decided not to tease his brother any longer; he achieved more than he planned, first by bringing him to fury and, after that, to honest talking about his weakness towards Sherlock. Talking about this any longer wouldn’t be neither funny nor satisfactory so there was no point in continuing it. “Yes, Mycroft. I met with Moriarty on Barts roof. We talked for two quarters. It was nice. He was unarmed and didn’t act like he was a psycho. Actually, I can tell you that he was unbelievably human. He didn’t tell me how he did _that_ but I’m sure Molly’s confession was clear enough, don’t you think?”

“What were you talking about?” Mycroft asked, a bit paler and again pressed his temple, not even trying to hide the sudden contraction of his jaw. A migraine. Without an aura, but extremely sharp and rather sudden. If he wasn’t Mycroft but just an ordinary man, he would be moaning in pain, tightening his eyelids and covering his ears, unable to bear the hypersensitivity to stimuli; the man only slightly squinted his eyes, but since he felt so bad that he was letting Sherlock know about it, that attack had to be really lousy.

“You didn’t sleep well and have a lot of worries, brother mine.” Sherlock said, looking at him from head to foot. “Too much coffee and chocolate... and, oh. A sweetener, a horrible amount of it. And few hours spent on the phone talking... You should lower its sound, by the way.” He ignored Mycroft’s killing gaze, walked around the table and gave him a pack of cigarettes. “It won’t get you any better but at least you’ll have a moment of pleasure. Smoke, relax and I’ll make us a coffee because I’ll die without it in any moment.”

Leaving the living-room gave him a chance to think about the strategy which he had to use during the conversation with Mycroft. Lying to him would be too risky but he didn’t want to tell him too much as well; he wasn’t planning to tell Mycroft about Moriarty’s past, for sure, same as about their first meeting in Janine’s house. He couldn’t say a word about her because Mycroft surely would send his people after Janine and take her on interrogation and it wouldn’t end up well. Janine was Jim’s pressure point – so putting her on a tray for those harpies from MI6 would be a breach of their unspoken pact... and surely it would put John and Mary in danger. He already made a mistake by telling him that Janine’s case was connected to Moriarty, but he couldn’t take that back.

Yes, he had to stay completely silent about her part in the whole case. He couldn’t say a word about the fact that Janine and Jim are relatives, that they lived in Brighton a long time ago and that his whole trip through the south had its own purpose – discovering of their relations – and that his journey was fully successful. No word about Moriarty’s real name, killing Carl Powers, insane mother lying dead in some of Irish cemetery, grandfather – a local politician who needs to be checked, murders and all of this pathology that created the future consulting-criminal. Mycroft simply couldn’t know about this, even ignoring the relation with Janine, because one thing was clear enough: he would throw himself on those scraps of data, send his men to Ireland, make a chaos so Jim would surely know about this and that would destroy all of the aces that Sherlock was connecting. And some of the jokers. The detective might not know how he can use them but he didn’t intend to give them to his brother just because Mycroft had in this dealing some cards good enough to win every game with a little help. He wanted to play with Moriarty by his own rules... and they didn’t need a third person for their tango.

So what could he say? That he found out that Moriarty is alive right after his show and that somehow, thanks to accesses that should be checked, the criminal heard about Magnussen’s case and government’s decision about punishing Sherlock. That, for his own, twisted purposes, he wanted Sherlock to stay in London and it was the only reason why he showed himself to the whole country in such a way. And, _yes_ , last morning he actually spammed his forum, letting Sherlock know that he’s watching him, that he sent him those corpses with cut emoticons kisses – the corpse of people who saw the death of a blackmail genius and still were a threat to hushing up Sherlock’s murder. That he found out that for this and for faking his own death from three years ago, Moriarty needed someone trusted, a man working in Secret Service and that, after Molly’s story, he decided to meet him as soon as it was possible to get something out of him – but he failed.

After he smoked the cigarette, Mycroft seemed to be more willing to conversation, less to a quarrel and warnings, and so he listened to this version without even blinking. He was nodding his head from time to time, however he squinted few times. Few issues must have been incomplete for him, he was a Holmes after all, not some ‘anyone’ with IQ acceptable only for a five-year old or a chimpanzee. He didn’t interrupt though, not even with a single snort.

The detective was finishing his statement, trying to remember each formulation he used – he knew Mycroft will remember – when his phone rang. At the very beginning he wasn’t going to read this message in front of his brother but his intuition told him not to postpone it and, how it turned out, it didn’t let him down. When he took his phone out of his pocket and only peeked at the screen for just a second, to check the sender, a smile appeared on his face straight away. Obviously, Mycroft noticed that change on his face because he wrinkled his brows angrily but Sherlock was too excited to care. He opened the message and blinked a few times, not expecting something like this.

_What’s your favourite colour?_

_Blue._  He wrote back without considering it and then, lead by a weird and incomprehensible impulse, even for himself, he sent another message which was so not like him that Jim could think that someone stole his phone. _Are you buying a shirt for our next date?_

Mycroft’s meaningful hum brought him back to reality; he put his phone carefully on a couch, right next to his thigh, and raised his gaze to focus it on his brother. The man surely deduced who was the one that Sherlock was writing to but even his skills weren’t good enough to at least hazily assume what he was writing to Moriarty... well, Sherlock hoped that because, although he didn’t feel bad about his message, he’d kill himself if Mycroft discovered its content.

“Sherlock, you do realize that I don’t believe in half of those things that you just told me. And I know that you hid lots of facts from me” he said, for some reason not commenting the fact that Sherlock sent a message to Moriarty right in front of his eyes. “I don’t care about a detailed confession but there are some things I need to know.

“The Carl Powers investigation.” Sherlock answered calmly, looking impatiently at his silent phone. “You won’t get from me _the other_ truth.”

“It’s associated with Moriarty and I want to know _how_. That boy is dead for twenty five years and all of sudden, you’re interested in his case.”

“A lot of cases that I’ve solved seemed to be closed.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll ask that junkie John’s substitute. And believe me, it won’t...” His comment was interrupted by a sound of an incoming message but Sherlock, although he took up his phone straight away, decided not to read that text right now.

“Don’t even think about it”  Sherlock said in a warning tone. “Lay your finger on Bill, John, Mary or anyone connected to them and you’ll regret that you even thought about blackmailing me that way. You forgot about one thing.” He leaned towards Mycroft who got pale a little when he saw a sparkle of insanity in his eyes. “In our relationship I’m the one who has the advantage and it’ll stay that way, as long as I’ll be your pressure point and you won’t become _mine_. Don’t you see it? The asymmetry? You lost, Mycroft, before the game even started because Magnussen gave me all good cards in this round. And there’s nothing that could restrain me from using them against you, if you don’t stop sticking your nose in that case or press on my people.”

“And what are you going to do with that knowledge?” Mycroft asked coldly but he couldn’t eliminate that small tone of anxiety from his voice.

“I could join Moriarty and announce it to the whole England, making all the most fantastic conspiracy theories come true” he answered, enjoying the spasm that appeared on his brother’s face. “It’s exactly how I said. You lost that game before we even started to play because you know that I can do such thing and you know that by doing it, I’d hit two of your pressure points at the same time. Because, my dear brother, the second one isn’t such a big secret” he said and straightened himself up, squeezing his fingers around the phone when another message came. “ _Reputation_ ” Sherlock said and his malicious smile became wider. “You’re protecting yourself in this shell of a cyborg without any emotions, afraid that I could break it and show to whole England how many sentiments are hidden inside this iceberg. It paralyses you completely. So... are we done or do you still want to play with your illusions?”

“You’ve learned a lot from Charles Magnussen” Mycroft said in quiet and numb tone. “Congratulations. I’ve never expected you to think that way.”

“Magnussen was using blackmailing for power and money. I’m doing this only because I want to keep you away from my fun.”

“ _To annoy my mother I’ll frostbite my ears,_ if I look at that this way, that’s more like you indeed.” He sighed in tiredness and once again rubbed his temples. “Write him back. He surely waits impatiently” he said and, without waiting for Sherlock’s proposition this time, he took a cigarette from his pack and embraced it with his fingers in a little bit feminine, so typical for him, way. The detective watched him for a moment as he nervously struggled with a lighter and then urgently turned his head and checked two messages... three, counting this one he got just right now.

_Tempting proposition but not this time, my dear._

_I’ll have that on my mind though. In the future._

_Do you miss me?_

This time Sherlock managed to stop his reaction when he was writing him back, his face stayed adamant; even if Mycroft noticed anything on it, he didn’t share his conclusions. He knew Sherlock was corresponding with Moriarty and even if he didn’t approve of that, he surely tolerated this fact and didn’t intend to fight this, not this time anyway. Sherlock shortly looked at his brother and blindly reached for a cigarette, clicking „send” at the same time.

 _All the time. I can’t wait when we meet again._ He inhaled with a smoke and blew it slowly, enjoying the fact that Mycroft is hardly stopping himself from continuing their discussion. Did he change his strategy since he realized that pressuring on Sherlock didn’t bring any results? Fine. He’ll spare them time and nerves this way.

_I think something short timing this week is worth considering. If you ask nicely...?_

_Asking nicely sounds better when it’s used face to face._

_Sherlock, you’re embarrassing me. You don’t want to know what I’m doing at the moment with your scarf and gloves._

_You can keep them._

_I wasn’t even thinking of giving them back. Tell me, if I visit you until the end of this week, will I get something more for lonely nights?_

_I’ll think about it when you visit me._  Sherlock wrote back, thinking that it would be enough of exchanging uncertain messages for one day, especially because of the fact that he was carefully watched by Mycroft who probably analyzes and interprets every twitch on his face. _My brother is here. I’ll write you later._

_Dear Mycroft? What a coincidence. Say ‘hi’ from me._

_I’ll surely do that._  When he was just about to put his phone to a pocket, he felt another impulse, this time stronger than the previous one. His hand trembled and Sherlock expected to start to regret that he wrote something like that, as soon as it is sent and there will be no possibility of withdrawal of messages; it didn’t happen though, on the contrary – he felt expanding excitement every time he imagined Jim’s face at his text message.

_XXX_

Irene would be proud of him.

“Tell me which information you want the most and maybe I’ll choose something for you.” Sherlock said, finally looking at his brother. Mycroft was staring at him for a couple of seconds, probably fighting the strong desire of telling him that texting with Moriarty melted him in shocking way but he was aware of the fact that such a comment would destroy chances of pulling anything out of him. He coughed, slowly brushed the ash from his cigarette and only then he spoke:

“Janine, what is this about with that _riddle_ you were talking about?”

“Nope. Forbidden subject.”

“And, obviously, Janine is untouchable?”

“Obviously.”

“Strange that you protect someone who told the whole country pornographic stories about you.” Mycroft said but he met the wall of silence so decided not to dig any deeper. “I assume that after your trip to Brighton you already know that she was living there for a long time and attended the same school as Carl Powers.”

“When did you find it out?”

“Before I came here” he answered coldly. “I was looking for some starting point since it was hard to believe that you visited your friend’s new house and then, with no reason, went to that school. I assumed that you looked through all her files when she was absent and decided to check everything since you were already there.”

“So I see that her documents are generally available if you’ve reached them?” Sherlock asked, not even trying to undeceive him.

“Yes, for Secret Service. There’s no reason to hide anything” he said and as he noticed that Sherlock is interested in that issue, he continued. “Born in Dublin, she lived there with her parents for six years, she moved to Brighton at first and then to London. Her parents are clean and the only interesting information is the episode with her mother’s depression. No conflict with law, no lawsuit, even fines for parking.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally” Mycroft answered. “Typical exemplary citizens. If all people were like this, the police wouldn’t be needed.”

“You checked the criminal records only or all of them?”

“ _All of them_.” he snorted, a little bit resentful. “Do you think that I missed something?”

“I know you missed something but it’s irrelevant.”

“Sherlock, what...” Mycroft started but he suddenly bit his tongue. “I’ll dig _deeper_ if...”

“You won’t find anything.” Sherlock interrupted, congratulating Moriarty in his thoughts that he was able to completely erase the records of cases in family court and even those relating to the divorce of his father – thanks to that, all the files looked like Sinead and Henry never been married, even if someone has such measures as his brother had. He was pondering for a moment to ask Mycroft to draw any information about the Sinead’s case however he was afraid that his brother will begin to inquire too much and eventually he’ll find something. Obviously, he doubted that there are any documents with information about Moriarty but he preferred not to risk that Mycroft will simply figure something out or send his men on a trip to Brighton; all in all, even Jim wasn’t able to cover up all his trail because there still were people who remembered him and they were easy to find out when reached, what he knew from his own experience. Even the combination of the names of Janine with someone named James when you got any information about the period of teenage and childhood - capacity for manipulation and disappearance, genius, waking up the fear and aggression in people – it was like adding two and two together. “The association of Janine and Powers begins and ends on the fact that they went to the same school.” So he said, hoping that it will end the discussion.

“Somehow I don’t think it was just a coincidence” Mycroft answered straight away.

“She was...what? Seven-eight years old when he died. What could possibly connect them? Common crayons?”

“And yet you’re checking the lists of students from that period.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re doing that because...?”

“Mycroft, that’s enough” Sherlock said coldly but he couldn’t stop himself from looking at pages with list of students; yes, on one of them there was James Moriarty name and that was the thing that shouldn’t be noticed by his brother. While it was possible to delete specific documents when it was a man like Moriarty, getting to and destroying absolutely all traces in files would be much more difficult. Of course, it applies to a time before the introduction of computers because he was pretty sure that the man was able to erase his presence also from digital records already ten years later. However finding all the collective print-outs of over thirty years was a different story. “We’re skipping the Brighton’s subject. Next question?”

“Moriarty was attending the same school and you’re looking for him on those lists.” Mycroft said and Sherlock just sighed heavily what was enough for all the answers. “While you were associating with common people, you seemed to forget that I’m not that stupid like them.”

“Next question. Your last chance” he pressed and Mycroft almost gritted his teeth in anger at such approach to the problem.

“What did you find out about Moriarty when you two met?” he asked though, finally leaving the subject of Brighton. “I want to hear something, _anything_ that I don’t already know.”

“And what do you know?”

“His spy in MI6. I’m sure you told Moriarty that you know about him because you wouldn’t be yourself without showing off. You probably talked about what happened three years ago but it wasn’t anything relevant, like...” he paused and stared at Sherlock’s face for a while and then moaned. “You two were communicating earlier. And that was what you were talking about before meeting on Barts roof... And he told you, at least partially, what he was planning to do, because I don’t believe that he was about to fake his own suicide at the very beginning. Please, don’t tell that you texted with him on _such_...”

“No. Go on.”

“You were talking about Magnussen.” Mycroft continued after a few seconds of stubborn silence. “You were deducing him and had some interesting conclusions and he, as you said, behaved calmly so there was no encounter... You _really_ were just talking. I suspect that he told you he is returning to the game and he was about to find out if you want to play with him again. Well, I’m pretty sure about the last one and I’m afraid that I don’t have to even ask about your answer.” he mumbled and shook his head that probably caused another wave of migraine pain because a moment after his hand once again moved to his temple and Mycroft kept silent for a while, squinting and trying to breathe deeply, as if it could alleviate its symptoms somehow. “That’s all that came to my head. And I want to know what exactly did you deduce while being with him, because this is the only thing that I won’t find out without seeing with him.”

“Actually... I can tell you that.” Sherlock said after few seconds of thought. “And you can help me.”

“I’m listening.”

“A year ago Moriarty was kidnapped and tortured for a few weeks. I’m almost sure that it happened in England. I want you to mobilize Secret Service and find out who was responsible for this.”

“What do you mean he was tortured?” Mycroft asked, suddenly getting stiffened. Sherlock closed his eyes, remembering the vivid story told by his brother about what his men did to Jim during interrogation, in which he also took part. Somehow even thinking about it made him sick, though few years ago he actually didn’t care; he felt even satisfaction when he imagined like a pair of muscled government bruisers holding Moriarty while the third one beats him, as he got stuck in a dark cell, undernourished and dehydrated, with a swollen face and rings under his eyes, devoid of sleep and overwrought by weeks of interrogations. He winced and involuntarily clenched his fists, feeling a sudden wave of disgust for that _version_ of himself.

“Beating, burned skin, broken ribs, lack of sleep, low temperatures. Standard” he said in one breath, finally skipping unpleasant thoughts. “He has a broken hip and degeneration in the wrist after the bad knitting of a serious fracture. When he tried to escape, there probably occurred a struggle, during which someone tried to slit his throat. Nasty scar. He survived but in horrible condition, I might say _half dead_. Someone was there to help him and I want to know who it was. Can you mobilize your agents and find it out?”

“Do you have any suspicions?”

“Former army officer, that’s all I could deduce.”

“When exactly did that happen...?” Mycroft asked in a weird voice.

“Something between November and March. But I assume it was closer to March” he answered and a second after his brother became completely pale.

“Sherlock...” he breathed and stared into his face with worried eyes. “Moran was released from prison in mid-February and he simply vanished. I won’t even try to hide from you that we suspected him that he had some connection with Moriarty but we weren’t able to prove anything.”

“How did he even manage to get out? The charges...”

“I told you before” the man interrupted him with an impatient snarl, in a moment snatching up from the previous distraction. “Did you delete such information as if it wasn’t anything important?” he asked with pity, and because Sherlock didn’t make an effort to answer, he snapped something unintelligible under his nose and continued. “Orders from above. He was acquitted and cleared of the allegation of terrorism, even though everyone who dealt with the case knew that it’s different.”

“Where exactly did that order came from...?”

“ _From above_ ” he said emphatically. “I won’t tell you who ordered that.”

“Actually you don’t have to” Sherlock said with a smile in which Mycroft straight away noticed something disturbing.

“Don’t you even dare to take this case” Mycroft hissed, frightened by the prospect. “Moran was released from custody in suspicious circumstances, it is a fact, but even I don’t reach any further and I don’t want you to try.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t even planning to. I already know enough.” He smiled again, unable to wait any longer until the conversation is over, so he could renew an acquaintance, so valuable for him. “Interesting, who pulled the strings first since we have settled that Moriarty was effectively trapped back then...” he said and snorted shortly. “But we can leave that as well. Moran. Tell me something about him. Why do you think he could help Moriarty to escape?”

“Because he was working for Army Special Service for years, he still has a few faithful allies who will get themselves cut for him. The best possible units, used for his exceptional tasks. To capture and hide Moriarty for a few weeks he needed someone powerful, so, inevitably, the team that rescued him - must have been extraordinary. And the first what comes to my head when I think about such operations are Moran’s men. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that Moran was released just when Moriarty needed his help. _The universe is rarely so lazy._ ”

“I want you to find out everything about Jim’s imprisonment” Sherlock said and cursed himself in his mind that automatically he called Moriarty by name just in front of his own brother. But on the other hand, there wasn’t a person in the world for whom it would sound good. “I don’t care how Moran managed to get out of prison or skipped all the charges, I don’t want you to get involved in this all because it is a waste of time, I want to know something else though. Who captured Moriarty, what for and for how long? What happened to that poor man who captured him when Moran took care of this. Oh and when you find it out... try to determine where Moriarty escaped and where he was hiding during next few months.”

“Do you have any traces that I should start with?”

“Scotland or Ireland.” Sherlock said and grinned when his brother sighed under his breath. “Are you satisfied with this information? Or will you drill a hole in my belly about something else?”

“Thanks to the information about his imprisonment so much work awaits me in the near future that...” He paused and took a deep breath. “Sherlock, I know that you’re engaging in Moriarty’s case quite a bit and whatever it is... whatever you’re planning to do, there’s no chance to stop you...” he breathed and the detective nodded his head, a little bit surprised with such turn of conversation but was intrigued enough to not interrupt Mycroft yet. “But you must realize that _flirting_ with this man is a much more serious issue than it was with Irene Adler and I’m sure that if he intends to destroy or use you for any of his purposes, you are committed strongly enough to get manipulated.”

“He isn’t going to destroy me and I’m not going to sleep with him, because I think this is what you just insinuated.”

“You didn’t sleep with her and she still made a lot of chaos in your head, even without sex.” Mycroft said after a few long minutes of silence. „Moriarty, however completely devoid of her undeniable advantages, is much more intelligent and clever. Besides, since he showed up, even more than her...”

“Do not worry, I won’t let him _seduce_ me. And my virginity remains intact.” Sherlock interrupted at this point but the irony in his voice was slightly pale. “Do you have something else to say beyond moralizing about _who can I go into the alcove?_ ”

“You’re really considering it.” Mycroft sighed in disbelief. “Of all the people in the world, after over thirty years of your life, you suddenly assume that you are not as completely asexual as you tried to believe you were, and decided to find out about it with the participation of the most dangerous criminal with which you ever dealt with!”

“Magnussen was the most dangerous one” Sherlock said, decided not to argue with Mycroft about this, although he was very far from such plans with Moriarty. Even if those, spoken loudly, sounded disturbingly... interesting. No, he really didn’t intend to incorporate them into practice, because it would be absurd, but permission to anchor similar thoughts in his mind... it’s still totally harmless. He _just thinks about it,_ it doesn’t mean anything.

“If you told me that you’re attracted to Magnussen, I would send you on therapy” Mycroft replied angrily, tearing him from the peculiar considerations.

“So Moriarty isn’t such a perversion?” he mocked and his brother held his breath in indignation.

“He’s _almost_ the same perversion as Magnussen.”

“I think that since he’s dead, Magnussen would be a bigger one.”

“As long as he is dead he doesn’t disturb your mind so it’s just a plus for him” Mycroft retorted; that senseless auction immediately recalled Sherlock a conversation with Moriarty in Janine’s house. _I saved you from exile... And you didn’t piss to my grate._ He smiled at the recent memories but his brother didn’t interpret it quite right. “What do you see in him, anyway? I’m not talking about the character undoubted talents, but just...” He paused, then shook his head; another grimace and once again, his hand wandering in the vicinity of his temple. “No, don’t answer. I don’t want to know.”

“You know me well enough to realize that my tastes go far beyond the banal corporeality.”

“Right, John Watson cannot have won the title of World Mister as well.” Mycroft pointed out, not even trying to hide a malice with a playful tone, which immediately made Sherlock’s face fall. “But still, despite of his many shortcomings, he seems to be more visually appealing than Moriarty. That accent...” he shuddered with disgust and looked at the detective’s worried face. “Don’t act like you are surprised, brother mine. My deduction skills are equal to yours or even, I think I might say, that in interpersonal issues there are far outweighing yours. About the fact how precious the doctor was to you I knew before Magnussen did. And you, by the way.”

“I promise to tell John that you adore him. He’ll be glad for sure.” Sherlock said coldly, completely ignoring the rest of Mycroft’s words. “But I should warn you. You don’t have much chances.”

“It’s obvious. We both know that he prefers blondes with uninteresting past more than tall brunettes far outstripping his low intellect” he snapped and was about to say something else but suddenly his phone rang. “Excuse me” he said, reaching into his coat pocket. Although he didn’t say anything for about thirty seconds, the expression on his face at that time changed from neutral to nervous, then shocked, and finally – furious. Sherlock had a conviction bordering on certainty that he knows what kind of message was just passed to Mycroft but he didn’t intend to be ahead of the facts. He stared in silence as his brother clenched his teeth and his whole body was tensing as the nearly burned cigarette was crushed in his fingers. When the man said something that sounded like a sluggish “I’ll be right there.” his voice trembled with anger.

“Bad news?” Sherlock asked indifferently and raised an eyebrow when Mycroft threw the cigarette to ashtray like he was trying to vent on it, which gave a little funny effect.

“Moriarty’s spy is dead” he said, getting up. “He was murdered in a closed, closely guarded cell.”

“Hanging?”

“Choking on vomit.”

“Interesting” Sherlock said, waiting for the continuation but not doing the slightest motion indicating that he intends to go with his brother.

“He had half a litre of ink in his stomach. We examining him because he had to contain the poison and no one knows how...”

“What colour?”

“What...?”

“The ink. What was the colour of it?”

“Blue. What the colour has to do with it?”

“Blue or maybe navy blue?”

“ _Blue”_ Mycroft repeated with irritation. “Why aren’t you getting up?”

“Because I’m not going to waste my time on things that already are solved. We both knew that this man will die before anything is pulled out of him and it’s obvious who is responsible for this.” He curled his lips in a parody of a smile and pushed the pack of cigarettes towards Mycroft. “You’ll need them.”

“Thank you but no” he snapped and took a few steps toward the door. “See you soon, brother mine.”

“Send me the photos!” Sherlock shouted after him, but the only answer he received was the loud slamming of doors.

***


	9. The Items

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The items” is the first chapter I translated myself. Sorry for all the mistakes, lack of articles and other grammar crap… my English definitely isn’t perfect :| But I really want the translation of The Second Game to be complete, since I finished this story in Polish almost two years ago. I’ll (ekhem) do my best ;)

***

Bill didn’t try to make Sherlock feel guilty when the detective passed him, deep in thought, carrying a laptop and a pile of papers. He said something about scrolling the list of suspicious graduates of Brighton school but then waved his hand and wished him luck… with anything he planned to do. The detective nodded, promised to call if he needed him and then headed toward the stairs with his head so full of information from Mycroft that it seemed to pulse.

Sherlock hadn’t expected he would ever hear about those two persons, especially in case of Moriarty. Of course Mycroft mentioned only one of them: Moran, who almost certainly was Jim’s mysterious saviour. Everything made sense, his weird disappearance and exoneration, the dates and his occupation – Sherlock’s deduction that Jim’s arm was re-broken by an ex-soldier when it was necessary after his release. Psychological aspect seemed to be correct as well: if those two spent Jim’s convalescence together, which was possible given Moran’s disappearance, the criminal emperor didn’t want to show him any weaknesses. Not to an impressively tall ex-soldier, who was a dangerous spy and who was able to prepare a terrorist attack in London’s underground. Jim was good at acting and he liked doing so, and for Moran he acted like an indestructible machine, who wasn’t terrified by broken bones, wounds that weren't healing up properly nor a bad pneumonia… A machine who didn’t have any traumas after seemingly traumatic cases.  That’s why they hid in some burrow, that’s why Jim ordered him not to call for a doctor whom Moran could intimidate and then kill. Instead he waited until his condition became critical enough that they didn’t have any choice… or maybe Moran himself decided he had had enough of babysitting his boss who was delirious with fever– and that’s when he found Corey Butler and forced him to take over nurse’s responsibilities. Whatever happened, Sherlock doubted he would be able to disclose it – he had never had a word with Moran and he didn’t want to ever draw near someone like him. He didn’t suppose Moriarty would tell him anything about those events and Corey… well, he planned to squeeze the truth out of him _later_. For now he didn’t want Jim to find out that he got wind of his past and he knew talking to Corey would reveal his doings.

Besides, firstly he needed to contact the second person, who took part in Moriarty’s case, person forgotten by Mycroft, who probably still believed she laid dead in a nameless grave somewhere in the Middle East. Looking out for a taxi which unluckily didn’t want to appear, Sherlock slipped his hand into his coat’s pocket and took out his mobile phone; he stared at it for a few seconds and then dialled a number he had never erased from his memory, even though few months ago he hadn’t thought he’d ever use it again _for the case_. He didn’t need to think about words as his fingers danced on touch screen unhesitatingly.

_Is your dinner invitation still on the map?_

Sent. He smiled and lifted a hand to stop a taxi which finally appeared at his sight; when he sat in the back of the car, he recited the Baker Street address and then stared at his phone as insistently as if he tried to telepathically force Irene to answer back. He searched for scenes with her in his memory – all of their meetings, flirts, her lies and humiliating punch she threw at him in front of Mycroft. Months of silence. And long, _long_ conversation they shared after he had saved her from the execution.

Flow of his thoughts was broken by the radio, when the taxi driver suddenly turned up the volume and the car interior was filled with the beat of annoying, popular music which Sherlock didn’t tolerate. He would have asked the driver to turn it down but at the same time his phone rang with SMS sound, _ordinary_ , because his old mobile where the significant sigh was recorded had been lost long ago.

_It has never been cancelled. It happens I’m in London. No, it’s not a fortuity._

Sherlock read the message twice and then he wrote back.

_When and where?_

_Savoy, today at three o’clock. Wait in the hall… and this time do not dress up as a priest._

He laughed but didn’t dare to ask her to dress in something more than jewellery and high heels. Before he realized in full that in few hours he was going to meet with Irene, who was staying in the middle of the _city just like that_ , right under Mycroft’s nose, the radio started to play so loud he couldn’t focus on anything. He picked up his head and was opening his mouth when he noticed a small item in a familiar shape, pushed under the seats upholstery.

Jade hairpin replica. Made of plastic but made of good quality… and a different colour than the original. Blue. Entirely _blue_.

He moved to see driver’s rear half-profile but to his disappointment it wasn’t Moriarty but some unfamiliar man in his fifties, who was checking the radio, mumbling under his breath. He frantically started to look around car’s interior searching some prompts but he soon realized that the hairpin was the only suspicious element besides roaring music. The vocalist with annoying voice was singing repeatedly the same chorus and when Sherlock heard it for the sixth time he realized that even the most idiotic song couldn’t be that looped and… oh.  He listened to the lyrics more carefully and almost burst into laughter. _I knew you were trouble when you walked in… Flew me to places I would never been… Now I’m lying on the cold hard ground._

“Excuse me, could you tell me what channel it is?” he asked the taxi driver who snorted with anger.

“I’m sorry, I cannot decrease the volume of this _contraption_. Something broke down after you got in...”

“Leave it” Sherlock said and few seconds later the song silenced itself and was replaced by some indistinguishable sound. Then the announcer started talking with voice common for workers of commercial broadcasters - loud, irritating and jabbering.

“…Taylor have been singing especially for our loyal listener who is going to dedicate the next song for someone. Hallo, Jimmy, can you hear me? Oh… and we lost the connection… But no! Here we are. Jimmy, you can deliver us your dedication right now!”

“This song…” Moriarty stretched the last syllable and chuckled in such way that it gave Sherlock shivers. “I want to dedicate to my… honey. Who sees everything but cannot listen.”

“Well… that’s not a standard dedication but, as you wish! Old hit of Australian star, who I don’t need to introduce to anyone! Jimmy, I’m sending you a medley of 70’s hits, and for all the listeners – and for the honey, of course! – “Love at first sight”!

After his introduction the opening bars of the new song started playing in the speakers. It had disco rhythm but sweet melody and lyrics which sounded kind of romantic. Sherlock listened to the lyrics that in any other circumstances would be innocent and typical for a pop song but it gained a new dimension when you knew it had been dedicated by someone like Moriarty. Sherlock almost agreed with his brother who warned him about involving with this man thirty minutes ago; about the possibility of being seduced and broken… about the risk higher than in Irene’s case and the perversion it contained.

_Thought that I was going crazy, just having one of these days. Didn’t know what to do then there was you…_

_The music you were playing really blew my mind…_

_Cause baby when I heard you for the first time I knew we were meant to be as one._

_It was love at first sight._

“Finally” the taxi driver said, when he managed to fix the radio and the music stopped. “Sorry again. I have to take it to a mechanic, I suppose.” Sherlock nodded, unconsciously clenching his fist on the plastic hairpin which started bending. He was staring at the window, repeating the lyrics he had just heard in his mind.

Moriarty liked showing off, that was clear. He liked hints and subtext and cracking wireless set was one of his favourite entertainments - actually he had done it before. Even though previous situation was a lot more dangerous and disquieting and face expressions he showed on the screen were still giving Sherlock nightmares, the display from a few moments made an impression. On the one hand it scared him that Jim was able to break into any place and that he used trivial and ridiculous things like pop songs to threaten him… on the other hand… _We were meant to be as one_. Something flickered inside of him when he imagined the way Moriarty’s voice would sound with its syllables-stretching if he said these words.

He didn’t believe it few years ago. Didn’t believe that they were supposedly the same, didn’t believe in angels and the rest of the nonsense Moriarty had been babbling – ultimately he knew why goings-on on Barts roof turned out the way they did. But now, after all those messages, two meetings, the promise of the second game, everything he found out about his past and, of course, after the conversation with Mycroft… Moriarty’s words seemed to gain the new meaning. _We were meant to be as one. Love at first sight._ Oh, he wouldn’t call the feeling that united them _love_ , it would be misuse and exaggeration but… well. Both he and Jim were broken, firmly and irreversibly and Sherlock supposed that none of them experienced emotions like ordinary people.

 _At first sight_. Actually, how Moriarty learned of his existence… _when_ specifically did it happen? How did he gain interest in Sherlock? When did he see him for the first time? Why did he want to _meet_ him at the pool if he could get rid of him after their game? Did their meeting, the first meeting when he was pretending to date Molly, change something? _Did I really make such a fleeting impression? But then, I suppose, that was rather the point._ Was Moriarty honest when he said that it had been his intention? It didn’t make sense because he surely had been watching Sherlock in Barts for a long time and had lots of opportunities to follow him unseen and to stare at him from the shadows; he achieved nothing with their forced meeting except of humiliating Molly. So why did he do that?

 _Costumes and masks_. Sherlock had been thinking that Jim from IT was evident and undeniable mask but then it appeared it was Richard Brook’s archetype… and few days ago Sherlock realised it was a man he saw in Janine’s house as well. He supposed _Jim from IT_ was a person Jim’s parents and school friends knew... maybe even Janine had seen him this way when they were younger. So if it was a face he showed his relatives as a child, there was a possibility it was the true one and… oh. That Jim Moriarty with his chanting voice, psycho’s smile and vicious eyes was only a mask he had created so that he was able to build criminal empire. Nobody would be afraid of clumsy, shy _Jim from IT…_ but he could arouse warm feelings in some people. Did he think Sherlock would become one them and when it didn’t work, he showed him _the mask_?

Sherlock chased away those thoughts, considering them absurd. He couldn’t believe that if Moriarty had been only a mask, the criminal would have been capable of doing all those hideous deeds, of killing as a child and murdering his mother and four kindred with special cruelty – or outsource it - at the age of eighteen. No, both of his versions were equally credible and… _too real_ to cross out one of them as false. Dissociative identity disorder? Wasn’t it too simple? But suddenly everything started to make sense: trauma from childhood and multiplying of personality as a defence mechanism. His father’s family as a _bastion of normality_ versus mother’s family reminding him of the murder he had witnessed being only seven years old. Cute, genius child loved by his father and stepmother versus little psycho inciting his school colleagues to various cruelties.

Pure psychology. Causes which were clear and symptoms, a bit less clear if you didn’t have to deal with him and knew nothing about his past. Dissociation. Cutting away from memories or maybe hiding them as they were a _pressure point_? By the way, maybe Moriarty’s pressure point that Magnussen had pushed too much wasn’t Janine but his childhood…? Two independent personalities, which may or may not know about the other one. If he was correct, both Jim’s personalities were aware of it. What was the theory? Drastic differences. Rapid switching between personalities, mood changes, psychotic episodes… _People have died. That’s what people do!_ Perfect. Almost a textbook example. Sherlock supposed that John’s presence would be helpful at this point: he was a doctor, he probably had more knowledge of psychiatry than the detective and he could prove it in practise… especially since he knew human nature and he often could read people in emotional way better than Sherlock. He would ask John what he thought about it all, he could learn the view from the outside from someone who knew Moriarty too and who could draw some useful conclusions that Sherlock didn’t see…

But none of it was possible. Sherlock clenched his lips calling to mind the thoughts about John was the last thing he needed right now. All these regrets, understatements and their shared memories caused an empty feeling in his heart. The reality… moved an inch and he felt a _draught_ and lack of something important, and all of this was so sudden it took his breath away. He tried to flee into his mind palace, to a place that belongs to him only, where he usually was able to move unwanted thoughts aside. This time he succeeded.

The treatment. Quoting textbooks, _the treatment is aimed at coping with trauma and integrating multiple identities_. Merger of contradictions. Forcing the individual to reconcile their different personalities and transform all of them into the new one. Sherlock closed his eyes, trying to catch a thread of solution which he almost had in his fingers. He supposed that Moriarty was aware of his disorder – even though he was crazy, he was a genius as well and had a great logical thinking ability. He suspected the criminal didn’t want to be healed and even used his dysfunction such that his masks were extremely reliable. Or maybe he treated himself on his own, pretending to be tough and believing he is infallible and indestructible just like he did when he suffered pneumonia after his kidnapping.

Few years ago he broached the subject with Mycroft when they were discussing plans for his final confrontation with Moriarty. Back then, his brother wrote down a list with disorders and mental illness which he suspected the criminal could suffer from; DID was one of them – next to masochism, sadism, different psychosis, narcissism, borderline personality disorder and even schizophrenia. Mycroft claimed that they had to be prepared that Moriarty would do something characteristic for one of them. Four of thirteen scenarios were based on this assumption and another five included that possibility partly. As it turned out,sometimes you should listen to your elder brother even though he seems to be preaching and blowing on the cold.

The evidence indicated that DID theory was true but… one and only thing didn’t match.

Their meeting on the Barts’ roof, the last one. Things were just as he told Mycroft: Moriarty was exceptionally _normal and calm_ , for him. Nevertheless he didn’t lack his maniac genius nor shy charm which was visible when he _hugged_ \- this could not be called anything else – Sherlock’s scarf when he thought that the detective didn’t look at him. _He was integrating_. Intentionally or not.

Or maybe he predicted Sherlock’s deduction about his behaviour and multiple faces and now he was laughing his head off that he deceived the only consultant-detective in the world which was as possible as any other theory. Sherlock grated. He couldn’t look through Moriarty and however it was usually stimulating, right now it annoyed him like a splinter stuck in a thumb for a week.

His way back to Baker Street was short, especially since the time seemed to speed up when his thoughts were running like crazy and his mind was fully occupied with deductions. He paid no attention to where he was going and when he was approaching the tenement house he bumped into some young man in a bright blue jacket – wherein he noticed it only because he still remembered to _look for blue_. He opened the door and heavily climbed upstairs; when he reached his apartment he started taking off his clothes and soon they formed a path leading to the bathroom.

It took him more than an hour to bathe and prepare himself before the appointment with Irene. He shaved very carefully, used hair conditioner he had stolen from Molly and ridiculously expensive, stylish Cologne he had found in Mycroft’s bathroom. Well, he decided his brother wouldn’t need such fragrance if he didn’t want to resemble an aging accountant who is stealing cosmetics from his twenty years old son. When he went back to the living room, he turned on his laptop and TV and headed to the kitchen to make a tea. There was a fresh bread on the table – surely Mrs’ Hudson doing – so, waiting for the water to boil, he took small shortbread and stood by the window. He tied his moist dressing-gown more tightly, leaned his elbows on the sill and took a look at the street.

He almost choked on a piece of bread.

The man in blue jacket he had bumped into. And a young girl beside him, holding a dozen of balloons, just as blue – which were so… _unsuitable_ on this ugly, January noon it couldn’t be an accident. They were walking slowly, heading to a corner, where they would disappear from his view so that he couldn’t see them anymore. Sherlock ran to the living room without hesitation, quickly put on his shoes and a coat, not bothering to change his dressing gown into something else; when he peeked at the TV, he realized that the channel changed into some music station which he surely didn’t turn on – and he heard a pop star singing _the music you were playing really blow my mind_ once again.

He didn’t lock the door and, completely ignoring low temperature and his state – wet hair, no socks nor underwear –rushed out of the building. He ran around it and a few seconds later he saw the corner where the _blue-pair_ disappeared. He was halfway when the ground vibrated and a moment later he heard a massive explosion. Car alarms started ringing, a cloud of smoke flew above the buildings; he heard a women screaming and sound of sirens, people were running, mostly moving away from the incident – but some took out their phones with cameras and rushed to the place where the explosion had occurred. Sherlock speeded after the second group, cursing the whole world in his mind, his lack of focus and ignorance. How could he ignore a man in an unusual blue jacket if they collided at the front of his house?!

“Oh my god, that’s a terrorist attack!” a woman behind him shouted and she sounded excited and terrified at the same time. Well, she was holding a smartphone and recording the whole event, so she surely was more _excited_ than scared. “Excuse me, could you move a bit? I’ve got to see it!” she squeaked when she and Sherlock reached the street where the accident happened. Sherlock almost shot her mouth off with something rude – or rather _deduce her aloud_ – but he lost his voice.

Behind a crowd of gawkers he saw a burning wreck of a government car. Identical to those that his brother used… and when he noticed the registration number he realized it was indeed _one of them_. Just a few days ago he was wondering how he would react if Mycroft was killed by Moriarty but wasn’t able to imagine it. Now he _was_.

Living without all those preaching, without saintly teacher, manipulative bastard who was convinced of his own infallibility. Silence on Baker Street, no insistent calls and messages when he was on a case. No secret agents, wiretapping and constant CCTV monitoring which affected both him and his friends. No forced appointments at Buckingham Palace and no boring cases which he didn’t want to solve and having those which he wanted taken away.

All that interference, _constant interference_ , terrible, annoying and unceasing; checking if he didn’t smoke too much or maybe drugged himself to death… keeping him sane whether he wanted it or not, all those condemning glances when he didn’t meet expectations, when he looked foolish or made an error… surveillance of all of his actions, detecting and repairing his mistakes, just like that, like it was completely normal to babysit your thirty year old brother as if he was still a child… and ceaseless statement _I am the smart one_ which Mycroft could  express with nothing more than a smirk lasting a split second.

All those things would end if his brother’s corpse was at the car a dozen meters from him. Unexpected check-ups  would cease as well as restraining him from everything he loved… he wouldn’t need to ask for permission and he would be able to do what he wanted – because he would inherit a lot of money, so much that he wouldn’t need lucrative but irritating and boring cases ever again. He could do anything he like, _anything_ , without the man who was giving him complexes throughout his childhood and always made him feel that he was not smart enough. Who was guiding him through adulthood like a child, screaming, stupid, self-reliant _child_ , incapable of self-determination and responsibility… and if Mycroft was dead, he would stop pretending he is an adult, he would sink into his mind, there would be no limits, no need to excuse himself and no, absolutely _zero,_ motivation for development because…

Because it would be pointless to go forward if there was no-one ahead of him to chase.

He almost lost the use of his legs when a wave of pain hit him. He moved forward, shivering and stumbling on the uneven pavement. He was crushed, he was almost choking when he realized what he would feel… what he would have felt if Mycroft was in the burning car. His emotions affected his looks because even the most hysterical onlookers were getting out of his way when he was moving like a ghost towards the car.

“Don’t get too close!” some man shouted but Sherlock didn’t even look at him. “It can…”

“Explosives were attached to fuel tank, it cannot get off anymore” he managed to say, not recognising his own voice. All the same he stopped as he knew he wouldn’t identify the body inside the burning car, not without proper equipment and without his mind which seemed to drift into a different galaxy. It did not have to be Mycroft, it could be someone unfortunate, _anyone_ , who accidentally was listed as Moriarty’s victim. He knew it, _rationally_ , but all the rationality seemed to leave him and stood beside, watching completely broken man and laughing that his hidden sentiments reappeared and filled every cell in his body, paralysing him and taking his thinking capacity away.

He didn’t know how long he was standing there unmoving but it couldn’t be that long since when he recovered from first shock which took his senses away the approaching sirens were still heard. His vision came back, he felt the heat from the smouldering wreck once again, he heard whispers and screams, his legs were freezing and wet hair was clinging to his forehead and neck in an unpleasant way. What would he do if Mycroft was murdered? It was obvious, so _obvious_ he felt a wave of incredible relief.

He would find Moriarty and kill him with his bare hands.

“I need a phone” he said to himself. “I need… a phone” he murmured again and started rummaging his coat’s pockets but the only things he found were a blue hairpin and a creased pack of cigarettes. He didn’t think what he was doing when he snatched a phone from the woman standing next to him – the same one who had been squealing with joy about witnessing a terrorist attack a few minutes ago. He ignored her vocal protests and dialled a familiar number.

He waited two rings..

And when he heard Mycroft’s irritated voice asking him what was going on, he leaned against the wall and slowly slumped to the ground.

“Hello, brother dear” he managed to say before his throat tightened so much he couldn’t articulate anything more. He heard that Mycroft was talking to him but he couldn’t recognise the words and it lasted at least a few minutes.

“Sherlock, what is happening?” the man repeated, clearly concerned… well, Sherlock presumed he _repeated_ those words, because he had no idea what his brother had been saying before. “Are you in there? Sherlock, what…”

“A government car has been blown up in front of my house” he said in a low, surprisingly quiet voice. “I suppose it won’t take long for you to get some news from…”

“Where are you? Are you alright?”

„I’m sitting on the sidewalk” he stated and giggled madly. “I suppose I forgot to put my pants and socks on.”

“Go to your apartment and _do not move_ anywhere. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

***

_Honey, I told you to listen… and you didn’t even watch._

_You lost a round. Daddy’s very, very disappointed._

_Next time… I think you’ll do better if you know that the target is your brother, not his people._

_Maybe you need stronger motivation to try… harder?_

_Maybe the penalty for the lost round, some innocent lives and the unsolved riddle will make you watch and listen?_

_You forgot I’m the bad guy when we were flirting sweetly. Have you expected anything else from me? Really?_

_I give you a free evening. But get up early tomorrow._

_Today you’ve been deaf and blind but I miss you anyway. XXX_

Reading Moriarty’s messages on his phone he left on Baker Street, Sherlock didn’t know what he wanted more: to throw his mobile against the wall or to dash out of his apartment and start tracking Moriarty to seriously harm him. He felt, he almost _knew_ , that the criminal is somewhere near, maybe in one of the surrounding houses, watching the events… watching Sherlock, his facial expressions and terrified gaze when he thought Mycroft had been killed. He presumed that Moriarty calculated all of this: he wanted to see if Sherlock’s brother was one of his pressure points which he hid from Magnussen… and from himself.

 _You went too far_. He wrote shortly, clicked ‘send’ with anger and then – threw his phone on the armchair, slumped on the couch and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t want to move from here and even the prospect of meeting Irene Adler couldn’t muster up any energy. After his emotional crisis from fifteen minutes ago he still lacked any strength and felt as if he had been squeezed through the wringer. Meanwhile he was going to see his brother, who was surely on his way to Baker Street… he would pull Sherlock’s tongue and torment him and it wouldn’t take him more than thirty seconds to realise how much the possibility of his death affected his younger brother.

The last one was sufficient impulse for him. He definitely didn’t need his brother to find out that he cared about him even though he was always saying otherwise. He stood up and rushed to his bedroom where he quickly towelled his hair and then – put on a random suit which he almost wrenched out of the closet. Before he left his flat, he had turned off the TV – there was a news channel, not some music station launched by Moriarty – and took his phone. He didn’t read any new messages but he wrote to his brother that he have to leave the house and he won’t be back till evening. He passed two blocks in the direction opposite to the site of the assassination and he caught a taxi in an area which he knew was free of CCTV cameras.

He still had three hours until his meeting with Irene, so there was no point in going to the hotel and waiting. Nevertheless he gave the taxi driver an address near Savoy and spent his twenty-minute trip reading the news on his phone. Information about the explosion had been already posted online and it had been described as result of a short circuit, which didn’t surprise him. No mention of a government car nor the death of special service employees. The journalist advised Londoners to check if the technical inspection in their cars was valid and to pay attention to any faults.

When the taxi reached its destination, Sherlock still felt some chills but he tried to ignore it. He holed up in a small, quiet Internet café and decided to start looking for information concerning Lorcan Patton to occupy his mind, though he knew he wasn’t in a proper psychical state to investigate. It didn’t surprise him that the Internet had not given him much information – local politician, businessman, divorcee, three children, tragic death. No names connected to him, no specifics. Local star which faded untimely in unexplained circumstances. He checked social networking sites and broke into few Clane’s offices. Of course, he could analyse all the documents which Patton signed but he was sure it was pointless for if there had been anything suspected in there, Moriarty surely got rid of it or erased his grandfather’s name.

There was one thing which was likely to be found without flying to Ireland and Sherlock decided to concentrate on it. Lorcan divorced with his wife who was possibly still alive even though she’d be quite old right now. He knew that chances weren’t high but after one and a half hours he found eight women with the name Patton, advanced in years and living near Dublin. He wrote down a list, added some explanation and send an e-mail to Bill, asking him to find out if any of them divorced before 1997. He told him to use all the measures he could think of and take care of it instead of looking for something interesting on the list of graduates from Jim’s school.

When he finished, he took out his phone to checked the Inbox – there were a few messages from Moriarty and one from Mycroft, John and Molly. Intrigued, he started with the last one, but his friend was only asking if he was angry with her about the Jim’s issue. Jim…! Even after everything that had happened she still referred him by his first name. John wanted to meet and talk while Mycroft – asked him if he was going to take the assassination case or wanted him to assign it in the records as Moriarty’s doing without further explanation.

 _No; I’ve got a case; I’m not_ he wrote back and then started reading messages from Jim, even though doing so was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

_Don’t get offended, it’s only Mycroft after all._

_All right, that’s not ‘only Mycroft’, but you didn’t ask me to exclude him._

_If you had asked back then I wouldn’t have denied._

_Sherlock, I warned you the game wouldn’t be easy._

_Sheeeeeloooock, don’t be maaaaad!_

When he read the last one he regretted he didn’t have flip or slide phone – because then he could slam it spectacularly and throw on the table. Or on the floor. His smartphone couldn’t be _slammed spectacularly_ since it was falling to pieces or turning off due to any stronger impact. The only thing that stopped Sherlock from getting rid of this delicate trinket and buying something which Bill would call _retro_ was its undeniable functionality and good Internet connection. He sighed and turned the phone between his fingers, wondering what to do. Threats could encourage Moriarty to attack Mycroft just to see if Sherlock’s words were true. Ignoring the messages could had the same effect. No matter what he would write, there was a risk that Jim would twist it in his own way and do something unforgivable that destroy all the pleasure the game between them could provide… after all he had done that few years ago when he put explosives on John.

 _If I ask now, will you leave him alone?_ He finally wrote and closed his eyes for a few seconds, just to open them back and stare at the phone which was silent for ten… twenty… forty seconds too long.

_What will you give me?_

_What do you want?_

_I’ll think about._ This time Moriarty wrote back immediately and Sherlock sighed with relief.

_Until then, is Mycroft’s case on hold?_

_Yes, but tomorrow we’re back in the game and ordinary people are still at risk. Oh, if you don’t comply with my future request you’ll have to face the consequences, honey. XXX_

_You do not have to tell me._  He wrote and this time he had no desire to add meaningful X’s.

***

Sherlock wasn’t surprised that when he entered hotel lobby and saw Irene Adler’s assistant, maid and friend, who he had met a few years ago. Redheaded woman didn’t change a bit even though her clothes, however elegant, were a lot more subdued as if she wanted to melt in the crowd – which she probably did.

“Please follow me, Mr Holmes” she said with a false smile and then she headed towards the elevator without checking if he obeyed. “Ms Adler is awaiting upstairs” she added politely, pressing the right button. Sherlock glanced at her manicured hand and the wedding ring she was wearing and he smirked. Interesting.

“I hope I’m not late.”

“But Mr Holmes, you are always exactly on time” she answered with an indulgent smile which resembled Anthea’s a bit. When they left the elevator, she moved ahead, tapping her heels on the marble floor. “Please, step inside” she said, opening the door for him.

Irene Adler, sitting on the soft armchair across the room, looked up from a book she was holding and on her blood red lips a smile appeared. As if agreeing with his unspoken request, she was appropriately dressed – knee-length skirt, thin, cream-coloured turtleneck, discreet jewellery, high heels but not so demonstrative as she used to wear. Her dark hair was tied but her bun wasn’t as posh as during their first meeting; she had a makeup on but it was rather natural – except for her red lipstick. Before Sherlock could see anything else, she pointed to an armchair in front of her and made a gesture towards her friend, after which the other woman disappeared in an adjoining room.

“Welcome back, Mr Holmes. It took you a lot of time to answer my invitation.”

“I’ve heard I’m always on time” he said, approaching to her.

“Well, I guess I’ve got to agree” she answered and raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to sit. Sherlock immediately did so and looked at her more closely, trying to see something on the face which had always been unreadable for him, but…

But it wasn’t anymore.

She has changed her diet, her dark hair hasn’t been dyed for months, happily in love.

His eyes grew bigger as the deductions started to flow freely, as if she was one of the ordinary people.

“I’ve surprised you, Mr Holmes, haven’t I? Of all the women you’ve ever met, _me_?”

Long-term relationship, hiding, arrival to London three days ago, miscarriage half a year ago, changes in weight…

Pregnancy. Ninth or tenth week.

“More than ever” he murmured and cleared his throat. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you” she said with a smile which seemed to be a bit too dreamy but she quickly shook it off and did… _something,_ that turned her face into a mask and Sherlock’s deductions stopped being that obvious and clear – he just _couldn’t_ deduce her anymore. His eyes widened but he wasn’t able to comment the thing that he just saw. “What brings you here after so many years, Mr Holmes?”

“Jim Moriarty” he answered a bit sluggishly as he didn’t got over the strange experience yet.

“Well, I should have expected it” she sighed with fake resentment. “Always someone else, always _a man_.”

“I don’t think you should be jealous taking the current circumstances into account” he noticed which amused Irene, who looked at him in inscrutable way; she opened her mouth slightly and looked down, so that her lashes seemed to be even longer than usual. “You know perfectly well it doesn’t work on me.”

“I know but trying is hard to resist” she said. “Such a shame, especially since I still owe you a _proper thanks_ for saving me in Pakistan.”

“You can thank me in many other ways.”

“Moriarty” she sighed with disappointment. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“He called me the day before yesterday and warned me that I should expect your visit and questions concerning his unpleasant experience last year.” She shrugged and Sherlock winced, angry that Moriarty foresaw his plans and told Irene about them. It deprived him of one of his aces but he tried not to worry about it. “He ordered me to meet you and congratulate finding out that I took part in his release. Oh, I didn’t release him _myself_ but I guess you deduced it as well” she laughed and started playing with a strand of her hair, showing her wedding ring once and again. “He forbid me to touch you even by the tip of my nail. Amazing. Do you know how strong he emphasized it? _You play your tricks on him and I will skin you._ Oh, Mr Holmes, what happened to John that your preferences changed so much?”

“He got married” Sherlock answered, looking away.

“The marriage has never been an obstacle for me.”

“But I am not you, Ms Adler and John isn’t all the more.”

“Pity. You looked good together” she said and glanced at the door, when quiet knocking was heard. “A tea” she explained shortly and then Kate, as if reading her mind, came back from the other room and took the plate from the hotel maid; moments later she put it on the glass table in front of Sherlock and Irene. She looked at the detective with a warning in her eyes but when he smiled to her, her face softened. As soon as the redhead left, Irene took the teapot and solemnly poured the tea into the cups. “While you and Moriarty…” she continued as if they weren’t interrupted “…I just cannot imagine you together” she finished and stared at his face, examining him so closely that he immediately felt almost naked. “He is so cold. So blank. Nothing affects him. Do you know how he looked when Lord Moran dragged him out of that hole? As if the whole situation amused him. He was half-dead, broken, bloodied and underfed, he barely stood on his feet but he still had a strength to _laugh_. That’s the only things he is able to feel: amusement or rage. I cannot imagine him being interested in sex and…”

“I do not sleep with him” he snapped since the insinuation irritated him more than it could be justified. “And whatever he shows you, that’s just a mask and I can assure you he is as far from being _cold_ as it’s possible.”

“Disguise, don’t you remember Mr Holmes? _However hard you try, it’s always a self-portrait_ ” she said, clearly amused. “But you’re telling me that there is some warm sparkle in him… or maybe a blazing fire? Mr Holmes, we can be honest with each other, you know that nothing shocks me _in these matters_. Do tell me… are there hidden _flames_ inside this wicked criminal?”

“Lots of them” he murmured ironically. “I’m sorry but I must disappoint you. They do not relate to what you are thinking.”

“The flames in personality means the flames in bed” she stated, looking at him flirtatiously. “I’ve got enough experience in these matters to know it. Go on, tell me more about his _flames_. I’m blessed with a great imagination and can deduce things in matters you have no idea about. It would be a pleasure to share these observations with you since you and Moriarty…”

“I’m not going to…”

“But he is going to. With you. And his plans rarely don’t materialize” she interrupted, taking the cup. “Come on, tell me about him. And I will tell you what does it mean. You came here to talk about him, didn’t you?”

“I came because I wanted to prove I was right about him.”

“If you were right? Yes, you were” she said and straightened on the armchair, finally realising that there’s no point in forcing Sherlock to confide even though it disappointed her. “A year ago I got… a message. Unequivocal information, that Moriarty had been captured, no-one knew where he is and who did it. His best man was stuck in prison and my job was to take him out of it.”

“Who…”

“Hush-hush!” she hissed, putting her finger on mouth. “I can’t tell you who contacted me. Moriarty didn’t need to tell me that but I know exactly well that there are secrets that cannot be revealed. _I got a message_ and that’s all I can tell you” she said with a fake smile. Sherlock had to bite his tongue not to laugh since he just saw a perfect example of how unspoken things are more important than those that were actually said. If Irene cut the topic it had to mean that the person who contacted her was someone Sherlock knew… maybe even someone close to Moriarty. Janine? But a few weeks ago she still hadn’t known her brother was alive, she was totally unaware of it a year ago. Their parents? It would be _weird_ and they would surely tell their daughter the truth and besides Sherlock presumed Moriarty wouldn’t want to imperil them. Someone from the past, someone trusted, maybe someone from primary school in Brighton or from Ireland… The spy in MI6? That was probable since Jim didn’t have any reasons to tell Irene that the man had been caught and was already dead. That was the most likely possibility. Someone who knew that they needed Moran, who surely was rich and could instruct Irene whom she should contact and what to do. Provide her protection for the action and organize everything.

He had to force Mycroft to tell him the name of the dead spy. No question.

“Before he was captured he managed to order someone to get in touch with me since he knew I had connections which could exonerate Moran” she continued. “I have no idea, why he wanted exactly _him_ and why he didn’t contact someone else since he still had some time left before being taken… but he must have had his reasons to do so. I didn’t want to participate but the benefits I was going to get was to significant to ignore them.”

“And you won’t tell me what the benefits were, will you?” he asked and Irene clenched her lips, looking away. Her mask started falling and the woman wasn’t able to hold it. “Oh… he provided you all of this.” He waved a hand and looked around the luxurious apartment again. “You were hiding abroad, you weren’t able to contact anyone without exposing yourself, you were lonely, bored and miserable. You just can’t stand having your hands tied and he offered you… what did he offer, Ms Adler? Freedom? A chance to come back to England? Protection, I’m certain. And lots of money. But why did you want to come back? Maybe to have your red haired friend by your side again, since she stayed in London and you didn’t dare even to text her the whole time… as you knew it could be dangerous for both of you. You waited for an occasion, for someone powerful who needs your help, powerful enough to protect both of you even here, in England.”

“Obviously” Irene said, avoiding his gaze.

“Moriarty’s position in the underworld must have been partly rebuilt back then and even though he was still hiding and wasn’t as omnipotent as before he had something you needed: money. And the money means connections. With the protection he provided you, you were able to safely get in touch with one of your previous clients… someone really influential and having a significant weakness for you. Such a significant weakness that using it was a piece of cake for you. You swallowed your pride and played the dominatrix for the first time in years and then you forced this poor idiot – using blackmail or your tricks – to exonerate and release Moran. I presume you caught this guy somewhere abroad; you couldn’t come back yet, especially since _captured Moriarty_ was out of the game and it was only someone trusted from his web that helped you, not he himself. You accomplished the assignment, Moran was freed, rescued Moriarty and then you got everything you’d been promised. You are safe now and you can do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t interfere with his plans. You know? That’s a bit funny that from Mycroft you demanded things that were almost impossible while now… you are content with less luxury than you’ve ever had, without all the fun and power… you’ve agreed to be his puppet and you don’t even complain.”

“Sentiments” she said quietly. “You were right, love is a weakness, the greatest of all. And besides, years spent hiding alone at the back of beyond really change the point of view.”

“If your demands weren’t exaggerated, Mycroft would fulfil them without a second thought and you wouldn’t have to go through all of this.”

“If I didn’t try to humiliate you, you wouldn’t give him the password. You don’t need to repeat that I lost that game, but… you know? You are wrong if you think I regret anything.”

“That’s all we are, the sum of our experiences and you won the war after all” he said and Irene smiled, nodding. “I’m glad you are happy” he confessed honestly. “And I wish for you that Moriarty never needs you again. He’ll keep you close because you are smart and a perfect… policy as well. But it’ll be better for you and Kate as well if he never uses you to play with political bigwigs again.”

“I know” she said and both of them fell silent. They were sipping the tea for few minutes and finally Irene spoke again. “I’m going to stay in London only a few days since we are moving out for good. Moriarty decided that protecting me abroad will be easier.”

“Where are you going?” Sherlock asked, trying to hide his disappointment.

“Continent. North, since it’s better for my skin” she laughed, putting her hand on Sherlock’s. “It may be our last meeting so if you want to ask anything else, go on.”

“Is there anything concerning Moriarty I need to know?” he asked, knowing perfectly well that Irene’s words may be prophetic. “About the last few months?”

“Having been rescued he called to inform me that he had sent me a guy who would fulfil all my wishes and it was just like he said.” She fell silent for a moment. “He hadn’t contacted me until the day before yesterday. I’d say I hadn’t heard from him the whole time but that’s not entirely true. I’m not talking about the show he gave us all after Christmas… well, I’ve got to admit I was impressed… it’s just… I just _knew_ he was keeping an eye on me to make sure I had everything I needed. Bringing Kate, doctors, money, hotels, _protection_.”

“And Moran?”

“We were meeting from time to time.” She shrugged. “Me and him… ancient history. If you look for the tracks of Moriarty that’s not the way since Moran is freelancer and as far as I know they haven’t been working together for months.”

“Magnussen? Do you know anything about…”

“The reptile that has been killed? Of course” she snorted. “Few years ago he tried to _blackmail me_. Nevermore I’ve been so amused as I was then. Me! The queen of blackmail!”

“Apparently he was the Napoleon of blackmail.”

“But I am _a woman_ and quite pretty as well, I’m _dominatrix_ and back then I had lots of friends, _influential_ friends and some of them were so powerful that Magnussen wouldn’t dare to threaten them. He backed off as soon as he realised that my friends can squash him like a bug which he actually was. Slimy, disgusting worm. Whoever god rid of him did the world a favour. Anyone else?” she asked and Sherlock laughed, amused.

“Seventy. Normal” he said which made Irene smile; he tightened fingers on her hand for a moment and stood up. “You’ve told me everything you could without getting yourself into trouble. Thanks for the tea and… good luck.”

“I do hope that wasn’t really our last meeting.”

“Me too” he answered and was about to go out when Irene took his sleeve, stopping him.

“Be careful” she said, slowly loosening her fingers; she smiled flirtatiously as if she didn’t want to end their meeting in a nostalgic mood. “And please, tell me, when you manage to _set fire_ in him.”

***

_Why did you let me meet her?_

The message he sent after he left the hotel remained unanswered for  hours. Sherlock spent the time loitering around the city since he didn’t feel like coming home yet. The next round was going to start tomorrow and he was preparing for it looking for clues and blue items and listening to every song he heard in untypical places. Phone rings, buskers, the thumping from already opened pubs, advertisements. However the streets, as if to spite him, became strangely deprived of characteristic blue, the music – terrible, modern and trendy – hurt his ears. He usually filtered it out and now it was maddening him that he had to let the sounds and lyrics fill his mind. When he realised he started thoughtlessly humming a new hit of some young vocalist he felt like dying out of shame. And it happened one more time half an hour later – when he followed a young man in a blue coat who was listening to some girlish pop loud enough that the lyrics was heard even though he had on headphones. It appeared the man wasn’t anyone important but when he saw Sherlock chasing him in a dark alley he started panicking and his attack wasn’t fake for sure. The detective had to spend five minutes or so to explain he wasn’t going to murder nor rob him and he had just mistaken him for someone else; that was the time he decided he should come back home to meet with Mycroft who surely would appear soon.

Sherlock was surprised when his brother called instead of coming and stated he had to fly to Berlin and that the case of the explosion which happened in the morning would be handed onto secret service and he wouldn’t take care of it himself. He didn’t say anything about meeting nor try to pull the explanations out of Sherlock to learn where he spent the afternoon – which made him… relieved and disappointed at the same time. The good thing was that there was no risk of confrontation but unfortunately the short phone call made the feelings from the morning return – when he thought he might not experience his brother insistent concern ever again.

The apartment was silent and empty. There was a mug with coffee on the kitchen table and half of a bun on the windowsill; Sherlock took it and started chewing, put the water to boil and went to his bedroom to change his clothes and when he laid down on the sofa in a soft dressing gown with his laptop on his knees he didn’t feel like doing anything.  He was tired after the night with Bill after which he hadn’t had much sleep, after all the emotions and lack of food – there wasn’t anyone who would force him to eat during the case anymore. He stared at the cottage cheese that he found in the fridge next to the a box with pig’s brains and sluggishly tipped it with a spoon. It was surely something Mrs Hudson bought him since she had already learnt that she should just put grocery into the fridge and not look at its suspicious contents. He reminded himself that he should pay her back for it when he will be paying the rent; however, since John had moved out he habitually was late with the payment and he even started writing notes about it in calendars and on the phone. Then, he was getting used to the notes and was ignoring them, forgetting about writing new ones or – when he _remembered_ \- he didn’t feel like getting up from the couch.  He was terrible at such trivial, prosaic issues like housekeeping or grocery shopping and he was really grateful  that Mrs Hudson was helping him with those since he had come back to England. Without her he would surely have problems with a bailiff for all the unpaid bills.

As the matter of fact, he didn’t remember when was the last time he paid her back for all the bills she took care of.

Sherlock sighed and sluggishly dragged himself from the couch. He tied his dressing gown and went to his desk, where he had some money, deciding that if he finally remembered about his debts he should visit Mrs Hudson and pay her all the overdue bills and rent, before the game with Moriarty would begin and all prosaic things be forgotten again. He opened the drawer and froze.

Blue feather. Dyed, that was obvious but originally it was grey and came from some urban bird; he searched his Mind Palace and quickly recognized it as pigeon’s. He stared at it for few seconds and carefully placed it on the desk; then he went for his coat and took out the blue hairpin. The items were the same colour but how he could find out what it meant? There was no note, the music wasn’t playing and the game was _on hold_ until tomorrow. Maybe it was just a reminder that Moriarty was observing him? That he was able to come here unnoticed and leave a souvenir? Or maybe it meant more that it looked like…?

Feather and hairpin.

He had no idea what he should do with it since his mind wasn’t at its best condition. He needed a big cup of tea with milk, another bath and a good night’s sleep. He decided to provide himself the first thing at Mrs Hudson’s apartment and listen to her chatter and sighs for an hour or so. The only thing that needed to be done was hiding both items in some safe place and the choice was easy – a drawer with souvenirs, where he kept old phones: Irene’s and Jennifer’s Wilson, but when he opened it he froze _again_.

His old mobile. The one which he had thrown out on Barts rooftop three years ago. It was discharged, of course it was, and a SIM card couldn’t work since he made a duplicate using this number. He carefully opened the phone, took out the battery and saw a new SIM card inside; he started frantically looking through the cabinet to find the old charger and when he found it he rushed to nearest outlet to plug the phone in. Scampering around it, he waited for the battery to charge enough to turn the phone on. When the screen glowed and he was asked for password, he thoughtlessly entered his current PIN which… was wrong. Of course it was, as there was new SIM card inserted into the phone so… he swore quietly. _The riddle_ , and he had only two chances left. He couldn’t hasten and try again in the heat of the moment, especially _in the moment_ when the state of his mind was so poor. He presumed he would need the phone later but… _later_. Just _later._

He casted the phone aside, took some money out of the drawer and having eaten one last spoon of cottage cheese, he rushed downstairs, closing the door on one lock. He knocked quietly, wondering if it wasn’t too late for a visit but it was only nine p.m. and his landlady probably hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Indeed, she opened the door with opened arms a few seconds later and she immediately started asking what he had been doing the past few days outside the apartment; she didn’t want the money for the bills and grocery but in the end she took half of the amount he wanted to give her; finally they sat down and a cup of tea with a piece of a cake with a crumble was put on the table in front of Sherlock.

“How the case is going, my boy?” she asked kindly.

“In progress. I had some places to visit and today I’ve been away as well.”

“You weren’t in there when the terrible accident happened, were you? Before noon…”

“The car exploded. I was nearby and saw it happening.”

“It wasn’t an accident” she stated. “Your brother came here, having all those suspicious men with him. He was _worried_ ” she said with emphasis.

“I wrote him a message that I had to leave” he answered blankly. “And yes, there was nothing accidental about it but now it’s Mycroft’s problem, not mine.”

“Oh, Sherlock…” she sighed  shaking her head. “He was really worried about you… and, sweet lord, something like that happening so close to Baker Street…!”

“He was the target not me and he is perfectly aware of it. If he looked worried about me, he was surely pretending.”

“I don’t think it was the explosion itself…”she said carefully, staring at his face. “That case… all those screens… It’s dangerous, isn’t it? I don’t want you to take a risk but I suppose it’s necessary if this creature is on the loose.”

“Do you believe he is alive?”

“Of course. If you believe it, I cannot see it as a conspiracy theory anymore.”

“Lots of people think otherwise” he said with a sneer. “You must have thought I went crazy during the New Year’s Eve party.”

“We didn’t!” she protested. “I believed you the whole time. John and Molly believed you as well.”

“John…?” he said, surprised. Mrs Hudson nodded sadly which made Sherlock regret asking and bringing up the subject.

“He came here twice but you were out. Talk to him, please, since whatever disagreement you…”

“For his own good, until I’m finished with Moriarty he better not come here” he stated looking down. Mrs Hudson sighed and was silent for a minute.

“I was right. The marriage changes everything” she finally said. “And in your case everything went differently, as it’s you who separate from him while he tries so hard to get in touch with you. You push him away… because what? Because you cannot have him whenever you want anymore? You want to have him exclusively or not at all?”

“Because today Moriarty blew up my brother’s car and for John’s safety…”

“You’re repeating yourself and you are honest neither with me nor yourself.” She reached out and tightened her fingers on Sherlock’s forearm. “ _Talk to him_. You’ve got a case which takes a lot of time but eventually it’ll end… and in the end you’ll be alone since John won’t be chasing you for ages and forcing you to stay friends. No-one is a saint and no-one can wait forever and you…”

“What?”

“And you’re already lonely. And I know you well enough to be aware how badly you cope with solitude and that it’s the matter of time until you get yourself into something horrible and break into pieces one more time. And then my heart will break as well.

“I’m doing fine on my own, Mrs Hudson.”

“Are you sure? You don’t need to answer me. Answer yourself, how you are _really doing_.”

“Mycroft told you something, didn’t he?” Sherlock asked with exasperation and the women sighed again.

“He only asked me to keep an eye on you since you are looking for trouble and hanging out with the _wrong people_. Nothing specific.”

“ _Lovely_ ” the detective murmured and pulled out his hand from the elder woman’s embrace. He looked down at the half-eaten piece of cake and the tea he hadn’t started yet. “Mycroft was right. That’s exactly what I’m doing and that’s why I don’t want John to be anywhere near when I make a mistake and something goes wrong.”

“Who are these people, Sherlock?”

“The worst of all” he answered and narrowed his eyes warningly. Mrs Hudson took a hint – she had known him long enough to be aware that sometimes she shouldn't try to force him to confess nor take an interest in his doings. She nodded hesitantly and then Sherlock took a teaspoon and started nipping the cake. He was mostly staring at the food but he finally managed to finish it, convincing himself that he needed a dose of carbohydrate and fat before sleep since he didn’t suppose he would find any time to eat properly when the game would begin.

“Can I help you somehow?” Mrs Hudson asked, when he started slowly sipping the tea.

“Please, tell me if anyone, besides Mycroft and John, has been loitering here lately?”

“No-one important. A plumber but I called him myself and was watching him all the time. Oh, and a postman left some stuff for you but that’s only leaflets and bills. There was nobody else.”

“Could you show me the letters?”

“Of course, I haven’t gone through them yet… even though they’ve been lying unopened since Friday.” She reached out to the fridge and gave Sherlock a pile of mail. Having put the bills aside, he started reading  the leaflets more closely. New pizzeria, Chinese restaurant, lots of short-term  loan offers… did he really look like someone who needed something like that? Some clothing discount and finally… a tiny, inconspicuous piece of paper, the leaflet concerning the opening of some new, small club with slot machines.

“Have you got anything like that?” Sherlock asked, frowning.

“No, I haven’t seen it before. Besides… I don’t think that such places advertise this way.”

“Exactly…” He carefully checked the leaflet printed on plain, white paper, smelled it – faint odour of burnt oil and something sweet… vanilla…? Vanilla an artificial flavour commonly added to processed cherries. The sheet was printed only on one side and the address of the club wasn’t full: Balcombe Street and a number indicating that the building was placed near Dorset Square – a five minute walk from here. No apartment number even though it was a residential building so he would need to go there and check it carefully… he read the leaflet one more time and frowned. _We would like to invite you to the opening of Booom Bom’s new club, Monday, 6th  of January, 10.00 A.M! Memorable experience, good music, new slots and the game better than any other! You will dance with joy if you come! You don’t need to bring your friends, we provide everything!_

“That’s rather untypical for a leaflet… who advertise a club like that? And the name, Booom-bom?” Mrs Hudson wondered, looking over his shoulder. “I’ve never heard…”

“Because that’s a message for me, not an advertisement” Sherlock murmured. He folded the sheet in a half, put it into his gowns pocket and then went back to sipping the tea. He was smiling but tried not to show his enthusiasm too visibly.

“I can’t believe you aren’t already on your way.”

“Tomorrow, ten o’clock. It does not befit to come to a party ahead of time.” He shrugged. “I expected something like that. Are you sure nobody came here today?”

“I’ve already told you” Mrs Hudson said, sounding offended and Sherlock got lost in his thoughts. On Friday, when the post had been delivered, Moriarty didn’t know that Sherlock wouldn’t solve today’s case and wouldn’t prevent the attack while the leaflets text suggested that it was written after the explosion. Well… if he was able to put the blue feather into Sherlock’s desk, adding something to Mrs Hudson’s unopened letters would be easy-peasy for him as well. He must have put the leaflet under all of them on purpose so that Sherlock could have missed it since he was taking the post from his landlady only when he needed a kindling to set a fire in the fireplace. Without the information, the next day he would wander around Baker Street’s area looking for blue items and listening to music from untypical sources… the old phone might have been missed as well since he rarely opened that drawer and…

“Thanks for a tea” he said, standing up. “And for your help” he added and patted his pocket with a smirk. “I’ve got to go.”

“You’re going there after all?”

“No, I just need to get some sleep” he answered; having wished her goodnight, he ambled back to his apartment. He checked his phone – the one he’s been you using for months – and when he saw an icon of new message he quickly opened the inbox.

_That’s what new lovers do, honey. They talk about themselves and want to know everything about their honeys as well. However, if I just told you about myself, it would be too easy for you and too boring for me._

_Irene didn’t tell me that much._ He answered immediately and he got the response only few seconds later. So… Moriarty had a phone with him and wanted to… talk. Sherlock smirked and walked to the couch, reading the message.

_Actually she told you a lot but you didn’t liiiissssteeeen._

_Your spy in MI6 contacted her when you had been captured._

_Yeeees, but that’s not the case. Not the case. Not the case at all._

_She got married and is pregnant._

_Well done! But what does it mean?_

_That you help her and sponsor her cravings._

_And…?_

_That you would sponsor mine as well, no matter what I asked for._ He answered back and then he started typing SMS so fast that his fingers almost overtook the thoughts. He sent every sentence in a new message, just like Moriarty sometimes did even though he didn’t even know why he chose that form. _That if I do what you wish you’ll do the same for me. That you are terribly jealous about me and you’ll hurt everyone who tries to touch me. That you think that if a woman like Irene can be in relationship I could be as well. I suppose you think I could be with you, no matter how absurd it may sound._

Having sent the last message he waited for an answer more than a minute which was driving him crazy. He showed down but he supposed Moriarty already knew most of it and his confession probably wasn’t that surprising, so there was no need to hide his conclusions anymore.

_Oh Sherlock, you’re such a spoilsport, seeing everything, just like that! Well done. That’s why I adore you soooooo much. Let’s say your little setback in the morning was just an accident._

_Then… the game is on?_

_My dear, the game has been on for ages._

_In my view it hasn’t started yet._

_I assure you, it has. But I’ll tell you about it if you solve all the riddles I’ve prepared for you. Expect something… soon. I really prefer watching you than talking. Oh… forgive me for threatening Mycroft. Won’t do that again, I promise. XXX_

Sherlock wrote few letters, deleted them with anger and then repeated it twice before deciding to send the answer to Jim.

_XXX_

 

***


	10. The Game - 1

***

Monday morning in London was quite normal – rainy, cloudy and cold. People were hastening to offices with hot coffees in Styrofoam cups, teenagers were dragging slowly and unwillingly to schools while bored retirees were wandering around bakeries and supermarkets. When Sherlock looked out of the window, he couldn’t believe that he was about to leave the house and solve Moriarty’s riddles again on such an ordinary day. He got the address, weird club’s name and silly, fake leaflet; the old phone he still couldn’t use not knowing the password, blue hairpin and feather, two songs which he should pay attention to and the colour he just couldn’t miss again. Not much… Still, during their first game he sometimes had even less, even though the hints he was given were more specific. Room’s picture – _go to the room_ ; the shoes – _find out to whom they belonged_ ; Carl Powers – _discover how he died_. Logical course. Hint, answer. Now he only had a few hints which wasn’t connected in any way and the only thing they indicated was that Moriarty was obsessed with him and that he ironically called his obsession _love_. Besides, he got all the hints in random order, some of them he found by accident and they could have been a misdirection or applied to some further riddle, being completely useless for now.

He clenched his teeth and glanced at the phone. Moriarty was silent so he obviously wasn’t going to give him any sign that the game had already started and Sherlock wasn’t sure if there wasn’t anything important to do or check before going to Balcombe Street. Of course, last night he had searched the apartment, turned on the TV and the radio, scrolled the news and the forum on his website but he didn’t come across anything interesting. Desperate, he even checked the films on youtube, which contained some shots with Janine’s house during New Year’s Eve, but now they were all clear.

He left the house at quarter past nine to reach his destination on time and be able to take a look around as well. The streets had already calmed down, most of the local residents were already at their workplaces and schools while the passers didn’t pay attention to him, hidden under umbrellas and raincoats protecting them from the drizzle which was slowly turning into vexatious rain. Sherlock was looking for suspicious blue items hoping that it would give him some clues before he went into a dragon’s cave but he didn’t notice anything during the short walk to Balcombe Street. The massive building looked pretty normal and there wasn’t any signs something untypical was going on inside. Ordinary tenement house, similar to that on Baker Street, few shops at the ground floor, two elderly women talking under the small hook of a pharmacy, young girl with a jerking dog, a teenager smoking a cigarette at the gate. Sherlock went all around the house, slowly losing hope that he would find anything when he noticed an odd storefront of a closed shop.

The interior was dark and gloomy and the display window was filled with lots of cheap trinkets, so trashy, that Sherlock wasn’t surprised that the owner had gone bust. The store was obviously abandoned but in the layer of dust were traces indicating that someone had tampered with the exposition at most a few days ago. His sight followed a track cleared of dust and he smiled broadly. Behind an ugly, little vase with painted roses over a dozen hairpins laid – all of them identical to the one he had found in his drawer. In all colours besides _blue_.

Sherlock looked up, trying to see anything inside the store but it was too dark to do so; the door was closed and there were too many passers to try to break in. He was wondering what to do for a few seconds – he could wait until ten for something to happen or take a risk and break in earlier after all. He went around the building one more time, peeking in trash cans and reading all the posters and advertising banners. However, he didn’t notice any new hints, nothing blue, no music… _playing_. A bit frustrated, he went back to the front of the store and checked the time – he only had twenty minutes left and he still had no idea what he should do and how he could get in. Suddenly, he noticed that from the closest staircase a woman with a cigarette came out; from under her cheap jacket an apron stock out and Sherlock decided she must have worked at a barbershop which was located at the ground floor as well but not yet opened. He waited patiently for her to finish the cigarette and then he ran to her and politely held a door, which she had opened with a chip card. She smiled to him and they went into the building together; as soon as she moved away, he headed towards the direction where he supposed the trinkets store’s back door was placed. The corridor was empty so he didn’t hesitate any longer, took out a skeleton key from his pocket and quickly dealt with the lock.

The darkness was so cavernous he had to turn on a flashlight and he sighed with relief, realising he chose the right door: he was in a cluttered back room, full of dusted boxes with junk matching all the rubbish he saw in the shop’s window, some cords and emptied, broken binders. He quietly passed through the room and yanked the handle of nearest door - dingy toilet for employees – so he tried the other one. He opened it without any further problems and few second later he found himself in a dark, dreary store which he had been observing from the street. He glanced at the clock again – twelve to ten.

The light switch was broken but the pale light of the flashlight was enough for Sherlock since he actually felt excited about the atmosphere of mystery in the store. He started looking around the room which seemed to be just an ordinary, closed shop whose owner disappeared or… _died_. When he realised there was nothing suspicious nor even _blue_ – which was a bit odd in such a colourfully decorated place – he rushed to the counter. He laughed shortly, finding a plastic banner with the inscription Booom-bom under it, which was the first blue item in the store. He picked it up and watched it carefully; not having noticed anything interesting, he touched an almost antique cash register connected to an old computer. Because of lack of electricity he couldn’t turn it on so after a short inspection he started ransacking the drawers of the counter; almost all of them had been emptied but at the lowest – locked, but that wasn’t a problem – he found a bunch of keys and at least ten-year Nintendo Game Boy. The toy turned on as soon as he touched it and on surprisingly high resolution screen a password field appeared. This time guessing was not an option since he didn’t know how many tries he had nor even how long the password was. He took a deep breath, inspecting the toy more closely but – beside the brand new screen – that was just ordinary Game Boy with arrows and action buttons. He was sure that until now he did everything according to Moriarty’s plan: he was supposed to show up here, find the modified toy and turn it on but he didn’t know what the damned password was…!

He started looking for the clues again, more and more frustrated. Precious seconds were passing by and when there was only a minute to ten o’clock, he resignedly sat down at the counter, deciding he would just wait, hoping that Moriarty hadn’t planted here a bomb which was going to explode at ten. He was staring at the phone, counting seconds and when the clock struck ten, suddenly everything lighted up with blue diodes while the computer turned on itself; the cash register started crackling and printing rows of meaningless characters, letters and numbers and from a hidden speaker above his head the music started playing an odd song which opening bars resembled a soundtrack of some old computer game. Before the vocals started, on the computer screen Moriarty’s face appeared – in his craziest and most terrifying version which somehow resembled that one Sherlock had seen in his mind palace after Mary shot him.

 _“Hello, honey”_ the man started, deafening the lyrics and, until the end of the recording, he was speaking almost only when the vocalist was singing in the background. “ _I do hope you are watching me now since when the recording finishes, the HDD will be automatically formatted and burned… oh, if you try to do anything with the central unit, let me warn you there are some small explosives, really tiny but not tiny enough for you to avoid getting your hands burned. Good boy!”_ he squeaked and smiled maniacally. “ _If you watch me now, congratulations! I’ve planned it all so well that tomorrow you’ll be a hero if only you manage to solve all the cases and win the final match on time. Have you found all the gifts from me? Maybe not all of them but some… you must have found ’cause otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Did you like the replica of our famous hairpin from our first game?_ ” He stopped for a moment and Sherlock heard a snippet of the lyrics in the background. _I’ve been trying to discover something that can last forever_. The detective smiled to himself; it was the first longer part of the song he managed to catch and since he had never heard it before, the only way to look for it later was by searching the lyrics on the Internet. Those words might be the only clue Moriarty would give him about the song and it relieved him that he got them, since listening to the criminal and the lyrics at the same time was too distracting and tiring even for him. _“All the material hints are already put in the right places and you’ll need them later… if you solve the riddles one by one, of course. And now, listen carefully…”_ he looked down and smiled, when the vocalist sang the words _true love_ , after which there was a short interlude, followed by a second verse which started with the sentence _I watch you dance. “Do you remember what I once told you? I love this statement, love it so much I decided to remind you of it. Falling is just like flying, falling is just like flying, falling is just… liiiike… flyyyyying”_ he sang in falsetto, stretching the syllables. “Have you memorised it? That’s really, really important, ‘cause, you know? That’s all I have to say to you, honey. So much struggling to hear only a few words…! I hope you aren’t disappointed. You won’t be, when the game starts, I can assure you. Good luck, Sherlock” he finished and sent him a kiss in the exact moment the vocalist sang _I’ll never walk away._

The silence fell and the room became dark again. The only sound Sherlock heard was the quiet buzz from the computer, indicating that the hard disc was indeed being destroyed. The detective didn’t waste time and the first thing he did was repeating the lyrics he had heard and remembering everything Moriarty had said. He smirked and picked up the Game Boy, having no doubts about the password anymore.

 _Falling_ … downwards arrow _… is like flying_ … upwards arrow. Repeated thrice. As soon as he entered the combination, the Game Boy flashed with blue light, played few chords of Staying Alive and at the centre of the screen the words started appearing. _Congratulations! Take the souvenirs and come out to play! You’ve got an hour to reach the next destination. Turn off your phone and don’t even think about turning it on until I let you._ After a few seconds the caption was replaced by a timer and small fragment of London’s map - but it had no names on it. Sherlock quickly recognised the place by the street layout and knowing that reaching this place would take at least a half an hour taxi ride, he hastily began gathering things he thought he would need later. Despite its bulkiness, he decided to take a banner with the name of the club; he put the print from the cash register as well as all the colourful hairpins and vase with painted roses in his pocket – since these were the only things that had been placed in the shop display recently. He looked around the store one last time and left using the back door; having gone outside he stopped a taxi and gave the driver the address.

He spent hours running around the northern part of London’s downtown. The instructions on Gameboy were clear and almost monotonous: he was getting a small fragment of the map and the time he was supposed to get there. When he reached the destination, he had to find a banner identical to the one he took from the trinkets store - they were mostly hidden in a trash can - in the same colours as the hairpins that were jingling in his pocket. In the first of the places he was given a bit more time so that he could notice a small keyhole on the back of the banner and realise that he had to put the matching hairpin into it. Then, some imperceptible speakers were turning on to give him another password he was supposed to enter in the Game Boy. Seemingly meaningless sentences consisting of short combinations of _falling, flying, greeting_ – which Sherlock correctly decoded as rightwards arrow – and _writing_ – which probably indicated that Moriarty was left-handed. When he understood the scheme, the tasks didn’t seem too difficult, even though the maps were sometimes hard to read and confusing. Still, besides the first place, he was given little time and sometimes he barely managed to make it; he had no idea what exactly would happen if he _didn’t_ , but he was almost sure that he would see a caption _GAME OVER_ on the Game Boy and that something nearby would be blown up. _Booom-bom_.

When the game started, he thought that his goal was to use all fifteen hairpins but at three o’clock he found a red banner for the second time; it meant that Moriarty could play with him until he would be out of strength, exhausted by all the running and stress. However, the most exhausting thing was the monotony and the fact that he had no time to rest, clear up his mind and try to deduce what it all meant. Besides, he needed caffeine – he had no time to buy a coffee - and he felt dehydrated after a day without any fluids. At four o’clock, when he still had fifteen minutes left, his destination was just on the other side of the street and he already saw a violet banner between two bins, he stopped at the nearest newsstand to buy a bottle of water. As soon as he paid for it, the Game Boy rang strangely and the time he was supposed to have changed into sixty seconds. Sherlock was almost hit by a car, when he rushed to get the banner and thereafter he didn’t dare to stray from the path that Moriarty gave him.

At six p.m., after the umpteenth code he entered – five rightwards arrows – the Game Boy turned off for a moment and then, instead of the map, a picture with a red apple and a message appeared. _Isn’t it a dinner time? If you are where you’re supposed to be, there is an amazing French restaurant at the corner on the other side of the intersection. Ask for a table which was booked in the name of Holmes, order something you like, eat it without complaining and then I’ll give you the next code as a reward. Do not think of avoiding the meal! I care for you deeply and I cannot let you stay hungry. XXX_ Under the text was an empty space to enter the password, so Sherlock, gnashing his teeth with anger, went to the restaurant to follow the order. He wouldn’t dare to ask only for a lemonade and a cake, since he knew he had to eat _a proper dinner_ and that not obeying would be a terrible mistake.

Browsing through the menu, he remembered Angelo’s restaurant and started unconsciously imagining John’s facial expression if he would learn how and who had forced him to eat. His friend tried to do so when they were living together countless times but he rarely succeeded and then… he laughed feebly. Moriarty just _ordered_ him to have a dinner. _Eat or daddy’s gonna kill the bunny._ Something like that. He shook off the strange thoughts and nodded to a waiter to order some dish and a water.

When the waiter moved away, the Game Boy flickered, the message disappeared but the place for the password stayed. Sherlock froze but before he started being nervous about missing something important, a new text showed up. _You’ve got a fifteen minutes break. I advise you to check your phone._ The detective frowned but took out his phone and turned it on; when he entered the PIN code, notifications of missed calls and text messages started appearing on the screen. Lestrade called him twice while John did it twelve times. And the messages from them… they were coming in a random order and when he started reading them, at first he didn’t get what was going on.

_I know you hate her but for God’s sake, Sherlock! Pick up the phone. What’s going on?_

_Where are you? GL_

_Could you PLEASE pick up the phone? GL_

_Pick up this bloody phone!_

_Call back as soon as you can. GL_

_Mrs Hudson told me that you were tracking Moriarty. Jesus Christ! This policewoman was kidnapped, Anderson is in ICU and you are playing hide and seek with that fucking psycho! Are you a human at all?!_

_Sherlock, I need your help… Sally has been kidnapped. Call me back as soon as possible. GL_

_God damn it! Pick up the phone you fucking asshole!!!_

Sherlock closed his eyes, dropped the cell phone and grabbed his head, clenching fingers on his locks, tangled after the whole day on the run. His hands were shaking, the pulse became rapid and suddenly he realised he had enough, that he would rather throw the Game Boy and all the souvenirs out of the window and then disappear, just _disappear_. He didn’t even need to read the new message on the Game Boy – _I guess you already know what happened to poor Sally? Yes, honey, now we are looking for her. You may answer them but before the fifteen minute break ends you have to turn off the phone. Good luck. XXX_ – to know that Donovan’s kidnapping was Moriarty’s doing. Threatening Mycroft was too much? It appeared Moriarty decided that kidnapping a police woman Sherlock knew and beating her partner _wasn’t_. Donovan was probably stuck in some burrow, terrified and bruised after a fight she surely had had with the kidnappers. And he had to stay here, waiting for his dinner, eat the whole portion since otherwise he wouldn’t get a password he needed to save her. Someone he knew was in danger and he had to _eat dinner_ as if nothing happened…!

Sherlock supposed that Moriarty might have had a spy in the restaurant so he decided not to wait and use the fifteen minute break he was given to call John – even though he didn’t even know what to tell him. Still, he was sure that avoiding it would be just stupid for his friend might know something which could be useful to save Donovan.

“Sherlock, for god’s sake, where are you?!” the man screamed, answering after the first ring.

“Tell me what happened. I don’t have much time.”

“You… you fucking…” John started, ready to throw a bunch of curses at Sherlock, who stopped him, not wanting to waste any time on emotional nonsense.

“I’m serious, John. Tell me what happened to Donovan. I really don’t have time.”

“Donovan and Anderson were attacked at noon when they were leaving Scotland Yard headquarters” he answered angrily. “He has been severely beaten and is still unconscious, while she had been immobilized and taken to a car without a license plate. The police tried to chase them but the car just disappeared into thin air. Half of the department is looking for her but without any clues…”

“So she has just been kidnapped and you do not know anything” Sherlock interrupted, regretting calling John and being forced to listen to his complaints and screaming.“I’ll take care of it. Look for her if you want to, but I’m afraid there’s no point in doing so.”

“Sherlock, what’s going on? You speak as if…”

“…I know where she is? I don’t but I’ll find out.” He glanced at the Game Boy and closed his eyes. “I cannot tell you anything else.”

“That it’s Moriarty, isn’t it?” John asked and Sherlock’s silence ensured him he was right. “Bloody hell, you’re doing that again! You’re playing with someone else’s life with the psycho that should have been dead since he blew his fucking brains out three years ago!!! If Donovan is hurt I will…”

“It’s Moriarty’s play, not mine” Sherlock said coldly. “I’ve got to go. I won’t be available so don’t try to call me.”

“Sherlock, what…”

“Take care, John” he interrupted, hung up and turned off the phone before John called him back.

Well, so much for the _tiring monotony and pointlessness_ of the… scavenger hunt, for that was the most adequate name for the game Moriarty had prepared for him. Donovan was captured, everyone was mad at him, his reputation was tarnished once again and John found out that he was playing with the consulting criminal again and probably supposed that was the reason Sherlock had been ignoring him lately. The police were alarmed and he was stuck in an elegant restaurant, staring at the candle and classical, red rose which was placed on the table.

When the dish was delivered, his throat was so tight that every bite was a challenge. The food had no taste for him and without the water he wouldn’t be able to swallow any of it; that’s why his glass was refilled twice. Even though he knew he had to hurry, eating took him almost twenty minutes and when he asked for the bill – he had to wait another five. He opened the check holder but the only thing he found was a small ticket saying _on the house_ , with a small upwards arrow and XXX on the bottom. He quickly entered the right button on the Game Boy and sighed with relief when a new map appeared on the screen.

Hours passed and he was still running through the city, slowly heading north. Twice, he almost bumped into a police patrol, which he would rather avoid, afraid that Lestrade had already informed his fellows that they should look for him. Hiding from policemen made the game more tiring and few times he barely managed to get to a destination on time… but he couldn’t give up since he knew that at some point he would get a map leading him to Donovan. All of this was taking too long and since it was already night, catching a taxi became more difficult and he had to use his own feet more; besides, all the banners were hidden in more unexpected places than at the beginning and the darkness made finding them even harder. Theoretically he could ensconce himself in some alley where Moriarty wouldn’t be able to observe him and send Lestrade a message in which part of the city he is and what he is looking for – but he knew Jim had surely prepared for such a possibility and he could end the game, claiming that since Sherlock cheated, he _lost_.

He was exhausted. He had already spent about sixteen hours on his feet and the last six he had been walking, crawling, sneaking or breaking into basements almost non-stop. Sometimes the recordings with a code were so long he barely remembered them, sometimes he was given only one minute to run to some place nearby, once he didn’t find a banner but a radio which he had to adjust to find the fake station on which Moriarty _broadcasted_ the code. Around three in the morning he reached an abandoned, completely unlit office building in which – if the signs weren’t fake – renovations were being carried on. The place was away from any households and the office itself was located between unused magazines and spacious parking and had two floors but no basement. After a short inspection Sherlock realised he had to break in quickly since he got only twenty minutes left and somehow he felt that it wasn’t another obvious task; the banner he was looking for – pink, this time – was hung above the reception desk and he had to use some force to break it off the wall. When he handled it and automatically put the pink hairpin into the hole on the backside, the Game Boy flashed blue and then the screen turned black.

Keep looking.

The map disappeared and the only things on the screen was now a text and a timer, which showed he had only thirteen minutes left. Sherlock clenched his fist, realising that checking the whole building that fast wasn’t possible… especially since he supposed it wasn’t another banner he should look for but something which might be absolutely unexpected. He ran the ground floor, opening all the rooms but there was nothing suspicious. Going upstairs he realised he had already lost five precious minutes. To make matters worse, having checked a few rooms on the first floor he came upon a closed door with some odd lock - the skeleton key turned out to be useless. He tried to break the door down but it had additional straightening and… Sherlock inspected it more closely… they were a bit different than other doors on the first floor and mounted here only two or three days ago. He started frantically palpating his pockets and finally he took the keys found in the trinket store out of it; his fingers were shaking and as a result the keys fell out of his hand. When he leaned to pick them up, he saw a tiny, blue arrow, pointing the locked door, painted on the floor. Knowing, that now he just _had to_ open the door no matter what, he scanned the keys he got and quickly noticed that among them there was a small, thin tube with a tiny magnet on it; when he put it into the keyhole, something clicked and the door unlocked. He crossed the threshold and groaned at the sight.

The room was filled with explosives and the mechanism on the wall was ticking appallingly; in the middle of the room, on a metal chair attached to the floor, sat Donovan, gagged and tied to the piece of furniture so tightly that she couldn’t move any limb at all. She raised her head as soon as she heard him walking into the room and on her swollen, bloodied face an absolute relief appeared… and Sherlock he was certain the picture of it would haunt him for months. He ran to the woman and the first thing he did was taking the gag out of her mouth; then, unable to look in her eyes, he kneeled before her and started cutting the ropes binding her ankles.

“God… Sherlock…” the policewomen whispered with a voice hoarse from the screaming and the gag. “It’s all going to explode in a few minutes… How…” she hissed in pain when the blood started running in her numb, bare foot.

“Nothing’s exploding” he said quietly, still not able to rise his head and look at her.

“Fifteen minutes ago a timer appeared…” Hearing that, Sherlock instantly turned to saw a big, blue “Booom-bom” banner on the wall in front of Donovan; there was an electrical clock under it, which screened the time left to a detonation. Four minutes. Three minutes and fifty nine seconds… fifty eight… fifty seven…

“Can you walk?” he asked Donovan turning to her once again.

“I guess both my ankles are twisted” she murmured, surely not wanting to show him weakness and say openly that she _cannot_. Sherlock gritted his teeth and stopped himself from screaming with rage; he quickly cut the remaining ropes on Donovan’s legs and took care of those tying her arms and wrists. The woman was frozen and all her fingers were so numb she couldn’t help him with cutting and untying all the remaining tapes and bonds. It took several seconds and when Sally was finally free and tried to stand up – she screamed with pain and fell back on the chair, since her ankles were indeed twisted or maybe even broken; they had only two minutes left and when Sherlock glanced at the beaten woman, he decided he had to help her before she starts protesting. He gave her a small lighter and then quickly carried her bridal style, still unable to look straight at her face.

“Hold on” he said quietly and as soon as she obeyed, he headed towards the exit. Even though he was half-conscious because of exhaustion, an adrenaline rush helped him to pass the corridor, stairs and reception hall; he almost jumped out through the exit door and now, finally being outside the building which might explode in any second, he started running even faster.

The explosion was so massive that the shock wave knocked him out even though he was already a few dozen yards away from the building. Not even trying to stand up yet, he automatically took out his phone, turned it on and called Lestrade to give him an address and inform him that an ambulance and a fire brigade were needed. Having finished the short conversation, he embraced the shaking woman and when he was sure she wasn’t looking, quickly checked the Game Boy and sighed with relief.

_You won!_

_Look for a hospital souvenirs._

_The next round starts at noon._

_XXX_

Sherlock didn’t even blink. He got eight hours at most and talking with Lestrade would take three or more, while he needed to inspect the rest of the items and hints and deduce if the game would continue with the Game Boy or something else; besides, he was in a desperate need of sleep, he had to go back to Baker Street to take his laptop and then hide in some place where nobody could find him. He waited with Sally, who was too tired and embarrassed to bother him with questions, until the sirens were being heard. Then he took off his scarf – another one he was going to lose because of Moriarty – and placed it on the woman’s shoulder. He would have given her a coat as well, but he had too many items in the pockets to waste the time with taking them out and _playing a gentleman_.

“I’ve got to go. Tell them I’ve been here and just… _had to go_ ” he said, standing up.

“I’ll give them false direction if they decide to chase you” she answered hoarsely, staring at her feet. “Thank you” she added quietly.

“You know perfectly well, that it was Moriarty’s doing and that’s my fault so you don’t need to try to be nice. Not now, nor _ever_.”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. You saved me. And I… until today… I’m sure I wouldn’t do the same for you” she stated. Sherlock froze and then, having no idea how to comment on her words, turned around and hurried towards the onlookers which gathered near the parking after the explosion. He took out his phone to call for a taxi, since otherwise he wouldn’t get any at this time; having done it he scrolled the notifications and new messages.

_Congratulations! Go to Baker Street and get some sleep, honey._

_Even though I programmed the Game Boy to tell you we are starting at noon, you did so well I’m giving you a break until six p.m. For now, just rest and don’t worry about the game._

_Looking at you, so tired and poor, breaks my heart._

_Call me when you find out what the next riddle is…_

_If you find you’ll know what to do._

_Unless you contact me before six p.m., two of your friends will get an one-way ticket to the stars._

_XXX_

 

***


	11. The Game - 2

***

Mycroft’s house was a perfect place, when Sherlock wanted to hide from the police, insistent friends and the rest of the world and its only disadvantage was the fact that his brother, for obvious reasons, was usually in there. However, now he stuck in Berlin and must have been quite busy since he didn’t try to get in touch with Sherlock; if he were in Great Britain and had some spare time he would surely notice his younger brother doings and comment on it. Before arriving to the exclusive residential area, Sherlock stopped by Baker Street to take two laptops, some clothes and all the items which had been dropped in the apartment by Moriarty – it wasn’t hard to deduce that the _hospital souvenir_ was his old phone – and the keys to Mycroft house; he left the apartment quietly, not wanting to wake up Mrs Hudson since he preferred she didn’t know he appeared. He would have too much explanation to make which would mean wasting an hour or so. He came back to the taxi and gave the driver his brother’s address; the only thing he was thinking about was the fact he would be soon in a silent, isolated place, hidden from unwanted looks by a high hedge and he would be _finally_ able take care of the case without any disturbance. The house itself was secured so properly that no-one, even John… _especially_ John… could get to him.

He didn’t predict that the exhaustion after an adrenaline rush would overpower his brilliant mind and it didn’t take long for his eyes to close; the next thing he remembered was the cabby’s pleasant voice informing him that they arrived. It would be surely less pleasant if the place wasn’t so posh but Sherlock didn’t care about it and just paid for the ride, deciding not to wait for a change. Leaving the taxi, he winced - his muscles became stiff after a nap in an uncomfortable position.

In Mycroft’s living room he was trying to convince himself that he was ready to inspect all the items he took from Baker Street for few minutes but he finally realised he was too tired for this. He lacked sleep and knew that the second round of Moriarty’s game would be just as exhausting as the first had been… therefore he would need his full intellectual and physical strength and he just _had to_ rest. He went to the bathroom for a quick pre-sleep-morning-shower and then headed towards the guest bedroom. There, he put his bag on the floor, set the alarm in the phone for eleven a.m. with his last ounce of consciousness and then collapsed on the bed, falling asleep almost immediately.

He woke up with a dull headache which was exacerbated by the loud alarm. He turned it off without looking and not caring about any new messages, he supposed they would make his state even worse. He went to take another shower, hoping it would wake him up. He regretted the fact he didn’t have the time to rummage through Mycroft’s cosmetics or deduce something from the way his towels were composed… steal some expensive shaving foam or smell all the posh perfumes in the dressing table. However, he knew himself and was sure that he would spend countless hours on it for he loved messing with Mycroft's things since childhood… and then listening to all the preachings and screams. Ignoring all the tempting amusements, he closed the shower and his eyes as well, letting the hot water wash the tiredness, lack of proper sleep and stress away.

He had an opportunity to make further plans in warmth and silence, without any distracting stimulus. Summarizing: the items he had found till now were colourful hairpins, the Nintendo Game Boy, blue pigeon’s feather, the Booom-bom banner, small vase with painted roses, the print from the cash register, bunch of keys, the bill from the restaurant and his old phone he surely needed to find password for. What else? A song he heard in the trinket store. He panicked when he realised he had a problem with remembering the lyrics but a few seconds later he managed to pull them out of his mind palace: _I’ve been trying to discover something that can last forever… true love… I watch you dance… I’ll never walk away_. It wasn’t much but he doubted there were a lot of songs with all the words and sentences. He didn’t suppose that Moriarty wrote the lyrics himself and hired a band to record it for him but he couldn’t rule out such a possibility.

Besides the on-going game he remembered all the cases concerning Moriarty which he hadn’t taken care of yet. Ireland and Scotland – he needed to visit both countries. The list from Dundee’s school and Moriarty’s grandmother who Bill was supposed to find. Corey Butler… he really needed to talk to that guy. MI6 spy whose personality he needed to force out of Mycroft…  and, of course, the kidnapping which happened a year ago. All those thoughts about Moriarty’s personality disorder… the masks, so perfect, that he still didn’t know which of them were _only masks_ and which – his true face.

And besides… there was John, who was still mad at him and who would surely torment him and demand answers even though it would be better for both of them if he took care of Mary who could be taken to delivery room in any moment. The last thing Sherlock needed right now was John’s distracting presence for lately he had enough unwanted emotions to add even more and as a result - drown into sentiments. Especially since if his friend had spent even half an hour with him after the New Year’s Eve Party, he would have noticed that something was wrong. Of course, he didn’t learn how to deduce and it would probably never happen, but he _knew_ Sherlock, probably knew him more than anyone on the whole world besides Mycroft. And although he wouldn’t have realised what Sherlock had been _exactly_ doing the past few days, he would have surely felt that Moriarty’s case went deeper than everybody thought… he would have seen the obvious part, the _second game in London_ and got a wind of all the others: Sherlock and Jim meetings, the criminal’s childhood and finally all those ambiguous messages the consultants shared.

All those words which affected Sherlock in a way they shouldn’t have… and all the messages which should have remained unanswered – he was almost sure that every X-kiss written to Moriarty was a big mistake and he’d pay for it later.

Even now, in the exact moment, when he was still tired, annoyed by the way Moriarty was playing with him and furious because of Donovan’s kidnapping – to be honest, he wasn’t sorry for Anderson… he was sure that if Moriarty appeared by some miracle in Mycroft’s living room… he would be _pleased to see him_. He would make him a tea and then he would watch him intensely, waiting for his masks to fall in the same way it happened when he met Irene. He would let Moriarty flirt with him and sing some words with falsetto pretending to be the Irish psycho… would watch him touching the scarf he gave him on Barts roof and shivering with cold since Mycroft liked his apartment quite cool and the temperature in here never exceeded eighteen degrees. He would grab and stare at his frozen hands, roll up his sleeves to look at the scars there, maybe he would even dare to move his collar and reveal that one he got on his neck. He would get closer to him and watch the scar from an inch away, his curly hair would tickle Jim’s neck and he would surely comment on it somehow… maybe he would even reach out to Sherlock, not wanting to be passive subject of detective’s inspection… which wouldn’t need to focus on Jim’s neck and hands only, for the rest of his body was surely _scarred_ as well: marked with fascinating lines and gashes after all the tortures he had suffered, every single one of them with its own history to discover…

He took a deep breath, terrified by the path his thoughts took and physical result of it. Looking down, he felt a bit sick – it really wasn’t like him to react… like that. To _anything_. He quickly cooled the water so that the coldness would _calm him down_.

 _Yes_ , let the doctor live in the suburbs with his new born baby and ex-killer wife who stated she had changed; let him live a peaceful, ordinary life of a civilian with a family – because Sherlock wouldn’t stand John’s disappointed look if he realised how weird his relationship with Moriarty became. And… if his friend heard what Irene and Mycroft suggested about its explicitness and physical character… what would he do? What would John do if he knew that two of the smartest people he had ever met - besides Sherlock - presumed he was going to have _an affair with an enemy_? Would he say a word about it, demand explanations and confessions or maybe – clench his teeth, turn around, disappear from his life and never come back…?

Sherlock closed his eyes, realising that a moment of disgusting and _too human_ physical excitement passed and when he was leaving the shower it was already only an embarrassing memory. Gone. But not _forgotten_.

Fifteen minutes later he was sitting in the living room dressed in Mycroft’s bathrobe, drinking coffee and staring at the phone on which he had over a dozen unopened messages. He took some painkillers and glanced at the clock – ten minutes to noon. He still had time. And somehow the absurd… _thing_ that happened to his body in the shower made him even less willing to get back to the case. All the items were laying on the glass table, laptops were turned on and the sun was shyly shining through winter clouds reminding him that’s the middle of the day and time was passing by even if there was still plenty of it until six p.m.

For the first time in his life, the detective didn’t feel like solving the case… as far as Moriarty’s game could be called a case. He felt discouraged and bored, had no motivation nor strength and besides – was angry at himself that he let it all begin. Rationally, he knew he should stop the flirts and try to _catch and arrest_ the criminal but he was absolutely sure he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t want the game which made innocent people suffer, where there were only riddles and _loneliness_ , where he got no-one to cherish his deductions and to run around London with. Moreover, he didn’t want to come back to the reality in which he lived before Christmas – when John was moving away from him both literally and figuratively and the apartment on Baker Street was becoming too silent and empty.

So what did he want…? To come back to Brighton, fly to Ireland or Scotland, search the Internet for some clues about Moriarty’s past, spend another day or two in Bill’s disgusting apartment, look over the files, make calls, read old articles and draw conclusions. He wanted to discover who Moriarty really was because that was something important, a real case, not a scene. He had no idea what he would find and that’s why it was so fascinating, unlike the game, in which the only substantial question was _who will die if I lose?_ He didn’t lie when he told Jim few years ago that he didn’t like the riddles – for the only things he liked were quick deductions and answers the former could provide. The awareness that everything had been prepared beforehand and _fake_ took all the pleasure of solving the case away. It turned out that _the game_ was only fun if experienced for the first time – and the _one and only_ had already happened few years ago.

However, if he had such a possibility, he would relinquish all the riddles, both the current game and those concerning the past, if he could get Moriarty _himself_ to deduce – with all his bruises, face expressions, glances and gestures, with his combed hair, frantic laughter and the scarf covering his scarred neck. Of course, he didn’t want an experience from the shower to repeat but was there anything he could do about it if the imaginary Jim was staring at him, slowly taking the scarf off and then touching the cicatrise with his small, stringy hand…? What did all those ordinary people do when they unwittingly imagined something with sexual overtones…?

He sipped some coffee and definitely closed that part of his mind palace. What ordinary people did when their imagination affected wrong parts of their bodies was _obvious_ but Sherlock felt sick only thinking about such solution. He always saw it as something both disgusting and embarrassing and after those rare occasions he followed his _biological needs_ in solitude behind bedroom’s closed door or in the shower, he had problems with looking at himself in the mirror. He winced, remembering the last time he did it… _many_ weeks ago.

He needed a vacation. Paris or Amsterdam. Yes, definitely one of them. No chases, no riddles, no captured policewoman whose only fault was knowing him. Especially the latter. No Jim in the scarf haunting him. Delete it from the mind palace, it needs to be deleted as soon as possible…!

He couldn’t do that. And that was probably the worst part of it all.

A few minutes later he opened the inbox on his phone with a heavy sigh and started laconically answering back to everyone, just to let them know he was alive and to think about something else than Moriarty for a moment. Molly and Mary were worried if he was alright, Lestrade texted asking to contact him to talk about Sally ten times, John sent him curses and demanded meeting and Mycroft asked if he was going to visit his house only if he was out. Sherlock laughed quietly and immediately fell silent, realising _he was smiling to the phone_ because he read a message from his brother who might have been a victim and died, but _was alive_ and kept an eye on him from miles away. He didn’t comment the events from last night even though he had watched them.

Sherlock usually hated it but now… he got the impression that Mycroft was the only person in the world who didn’t see leaving Sally and hiding from police and friends _freaky_. He knew, he must have known, that his younger brother started a game and was perfectly aware what it meant. Sighing, Sherlock wrote the answer, deleted it, wrote again, changed it few times and only then he decided it looked good enough to be sent.

_I like the company better when you’re out. Are you going to send me Moriarty’s spy files?_

_That’s out of question. They were classified as a state secret._

_And have you already found something about his capture from last year?_

_I’ve got some brief suspicions but nothing specific. How is the case?_

_Why asking? Don’t tell me you haven’t done a little recon yet._

_Yes, poor Sally Donovan, kidnapped and beaten. I hope you had more fun than her._

_Less than I thought I would have._ He wrote back, feeling a bit strange that he was disappointed enough to actually write it and downhearted enough to complain about it to – of all the people in the world – _Mycroft_ , who could use such confession against him later.

_Interesting. Am I right presuming you did not enjoy yourself because you would prefer flirting with him instead of jumping around London like a good, little bunny?_

_Something like that_. He wrote, even though he knew a honest answer would be something like I’d like to undress him completely and inspect every single scar he has, deduce how and when it was made, how it hurt and healed and how he looked like when he was wounded, bandaged and recovering. Yes, too much honesty wouldn’t do any good.

_I would like to lock you in a psychiatric facility once again to be sure you are safe from him._

_Sometimes I feel like letting you do that._ Sherlock finished, not expecting the answer; after few deeper breathes he opened SMS he saved for last for obvious reasons.

 _Did you sleep well, honey? XXX_ He read and when the first answer which came into his mind was _I would sleep better with you beside me_ , he felt an urge to throw the phone against the wall. It took him a few minutes to compose himself enough to be able to actually write back, but his fingers were a bit stiff, as if they didn’t want to cooperate with his brain fatigued by unwanted visions.

_Mycroft’s bed is quite comfortable so I guess I did._

He put the cell aside and looked down. The items. The case. Someone was going to be in danger and he, instead of looking for clues, was getting weak and sentimental. He started inspecting the souvenirs reluctantly, concentrating on those yet unused; even though Moriarty had told him which of them was the most important, on the contrary he started with the small vase; there was a ticket inside of it, with a hand drawn flower, signed _2014-01-09 Wandering Candles._ So… it was something he was going to need on Thursday but not now. He had no idea how to connect the blue feather with anything, the bill seemed to be nothing important after all. The imprint from cash register with rows of symbols which surely has some massage coded but Sherlock - after spending fifteen minutes trying to decipher it – realised it was more complicated than he had presumed. He scanned everything one more time and took the banner to inspect it more carefully than he did during the first round of the game. It took him few minutes to remove the top layer of thin plastic and what he saw inside was tiny speaker and a second keyhole, in which the tip of the hairpin could be inserted. He did so, hoping for some hint what he should do next, so the recorded message from Moriarty only irritated him.

_Congratulations! You’ve won the first round but I guess you already know it. And now you’re playing with the hairpins instead of thinking, again, again, again…! You see but you don’t listen…! When will you learn how to listen?_

Sherlock pull out the hairpin and then inserted it into the hole one more time, wanting to listen the recording twice… and snorted, angry at Jim and his own ignorance as well. He rushed to the laptop and typed the lyrics he heard in the trinket store into the browser; the answer came immediately and it was so obvious he wanted to scream. He lost so much time contemplating the shape of roses painted on the vase and thinking about his physical reactions, while the answer was right under his nose… yes, he _was_ angry but the discovery woke him up and snap him out of the lethargy.

_True Love 1980_

He searched the song on youtube, took his old phone and entered the password with no hesitation. 1980 – a year between his and Jim’s year of birth… a number from a song released by some Irish band called _Ash_ – could it be any more obvious? – and the lyrics which were exactly what Jim would want to tell him. He waited a moment for a phone to turn on and wasn’t surprised when he saw a message in the inbox, sent four days ago.

_You had no idea how happy I am that you are reading it! Good for you, that you finally started listening and thinking, since something horrible might have happened if you didn’t. Of course, I would take care of your injuries, honey, it wouldn’t bother me at all but I guess you’d be sad because of losing both the game and two innocent souls which would fly straight to heaven. Do you like the song? I’ve found it just for you._

_Better than the previous ones._ He wrote back using his old phone and feeling kind of strange doing so since he had not supposed he would be using it ever again.

_Oh, Sherlock! And finally I’m in touch with you. Observing you solving the cases using the programmed oldie just wasn’t enough. Listen to it, listen carefully... and tell me which part of the lyrics you like the most. It’s not a riddle just… something I’d really like to know._

_‘Don’t be scared of your emotions’._ He typed as soon as the song ended. And, not knowing why, entered _replay_ on the website.

_Really? My favourite line is ‘You and I should be united’. And the title! I love it just as much. Are you ready for a new riddle?_

_I’ve been waiting for it since I turned on that phone._ He wrote; two minutes passed and then the messages from Jim started appearing on the screen one by one.

_So honey, who should be the target?_

_There are two angels and you are supposedly not one of them…_

_…but surely on their side. And I’d like to know who you care about more._

_Turn on the Game Boy and enter the password, I’m sure you’ll guess it since you’ve got all the hints you need._

_Then… choose the angel who will die if you lose the second round._

_Oh… if you don’t do that in the next hour, I’ll kill both of them._

Having read the last SMS, Sherlock immediately checked the items once again. _The code_. The only possible thing that could be useful was the imprint from cash register but how could he find anything in the hundreds rows of special characters, punctuations, letters, numbers and even some symbols which he recognised as “M” written in different alphabets…? He scanned the list and this time, having some idea about what to look for, he found it in less than a minute: one line started with _1980_ and it was the only one in which arrows in different directions were printed as well. He turned on the Game Boy and entered the code, noting down the letters between them, feeling that he would need them later.

Up, up, right, up, down. The Game Boy flashed in blue and a moment later two photos appeared on the screen. Molly and Mrs Hudson. Both of them smiling, calm and unaware of the fact that Sherlock was going to decide whose life would be in danger until the end of the second round of Moriarty’s game. The detective clicked the right button few times and stopped when Molly’s photo was highlighted. Still, he wasn’t able to push any action button to confirm his choice. How could Moriarty do that to him…?

The worst thing was the fact that when he imagined a life without one of the women, he had no doubts whom he would miss more –a life without Mrs Hudson who probably loved him more than his own mother and had been taking care of him for years would be unbearable while lack of Molly he might not notice at all. He tried to convince himself that he would chose the young pathologist because Moriarty wouldn’t gain anything from getting rid of a woman who was connected to Corey Butler, his _spy in Barts_ but he knew he was lying to himself. He clicked the action button with no hesitation nor remorse; a few seconds later his old phone made a few sounds of a new messages.

_Molly? Interesting. Remember that if you warn to her, it will be Mrs Hudson who die._

_And if you warn Mycroft, the police or anyone who could spoil the fun, I’ll kill them both._

_You’ve done it all quickly, so you’ve got plenty of time left. Rest. We’re gonna have two-days-fun._

_Leave the Game Boy, you won’t need it anymore._

_We’re starting at six p.m._

_XXX_

Sherlock didn’t write back, afraid he would lose too much time on texting with Moriarty and that it could distract him once again. He was afraid his thoughts would become improper and was a bit disgusted with himself that Molly’s case didn’t give him as much motivation as it should have given… as Jim thought it would. Of course he was excited when he recognised the song and started analysing the lyrics but still…! He didn’t want solving the riddles and playing the scavenger hunt with Moriarty. Now he wanted to come back to Bill’s and go on with discovering the secrets of the criminal’s. Finding out who he really was would be a true victory. A _checkmate_.

The riddles were tiring and boring.

The murders from the past, family secrets and Jim’s scars weren’t.

However, he wasn’t going to lose the current game by default nor let anyone he knew suffer or die. It would make him too visible, Mycroft would intervene and in the end the game _he_ was planning for Moriarty would be spoiled. That was why, even though he had no mood nor strength, he took the imprint and started breaking the code line by line. Now, when he knew he should use the song lyrics to do so – he had to delete every word that appeared in them and only then start with the decryption – the code was difficult but not _impossible_ to break.

It took him four hours to decipher most of the message coded in the imprint. He barely noticed that Anthea came by, unsurprised by his presence, hanged around the house and left him some food – a fish paste, a wholemeal bread, few glucose bars and a thermos with hot coffee. She was about to leave when she stood beside him, put a hand on his shoulder and looked at him as if she wanted to tell him something but – seeing he was not going to react, she gave up her attempts to communicate. As soon as she was out he peeked at the untypical meal she prepared and even though he wasn’t hungry, he decided to eat it when he decoding the cipher. If he was about to have another marathon around the city he would need some calories to burn even though in his opinion digestion was slowing his brain.

It was already past four p.m. when the seemingly senseless symbols was turned into messages – addresses in different parts of London – and every one of them had been coded differently, so that he needed some hint from the lyrics or just pure luck. Maybe Moriarty underestimated his abilities or he was going to get a new clue in every place he was about to visit; he still had some time left so that he started thinking about the most optimal route to visit them all. Besides, a few lines he didn’t manage to decode so he suppose some hint would be given to him later.

He supposed he was ahead with the tasks and that was the most important thing.

Half an hour later he was dressed and ready to go so he took a last look on the items and after a moment of hesitation he picked up the old phone deciding that the only person he would need to be in touch with was Moriarty while everyone else would only disturb him. He had gotten some messages from John and Lestrade but he didn’t read them; the only thing he did using his current phone was sending Mycroft a warning not preach if he didn’t want someone hurt. Then, he took the blue hairpin – just in case – sheet of paper with his notes and lyrics, the imprint from cash register and the bunch of keys. He left the rest in the bedroom he had slept in and checked  the locks twice before leaving the house and getting into the taxi. He smirked, glancing at the clock, since it was only five o’clock and he was already driving to the first destination.

 _Being ahead_ was the only thing that excited him enough to leave the house instead of texting Moriarty that he decoded most of the addresses so he could go to the last place on the list right away and end the game.

As a result he spent the whole night on his feet. Different places, different cases to solve. In the first area he found an electronic token on which a hint for a next address – which he already knew – was screened; there the situation repeated and at six p.m. he got a first SMS containing a row of numbers which would be misleading if he used it to decipher the first address. He laughed, since that was something new and a bit more interesting. He didn’t know if Moriarty was observing him nor if he already knew that Sherlock left home earlier than he was said. Did he really think that the detective wouldn’t decipher the code using the lyrics but without complete data…? Yes, he underestimated him or just… wanted to check _how much_ ahead of time Sherlock would be at the end of the game.

He was entering the codes and passwords on the token, noting addresses which he hadn’t decoded at home and thanks to planning the route it wasn’t as bad and tiring as the previous game. From time to time Moriarty was sending him photos with Molly – sleeping, eating, working in the hospital or talking to Lestrade… he smiled grimly realising that it must have been Corey Butler who had taken them. Yes, he definitely needed to meet and scare that lousy fool . And then tell Jim that he knows, he knows, _he knows everything_ …

The first difficulties he encountered twelve hours later – he had already visited two-thirds of the places on the list – when he needed around 45 minutes to decipher one of the missing addresses. It was coded in two separate ways and more complicated than the previous ones so Sherlock supposed the place could be somehow more important than the others and he was right. He was send to the suburbs but before he arrived there he was stuck in morning traffic and was almost sure it took all the time he had saved at the beginning. He was convinced when a timer appeared on the phone screen – he got an hour to reach the next destination. Moriarty must have observed the place and he was being late…

In a closed house which he needed to break into he found an extremely exhausted but fortunately alive teenage girl, lying unconscious next to a foreign looking guy who had been shot a few hours ago. The deduction wasn’t hard – the man had kidnapped the girl, kept her in here and probably abused her sexually… and today got shot in the head. A window broken by the bullet and a shot from a distance, precise as a scalpel. Moriarty must have found the place earlier, he knew about that man and waited for their game to start so that he could kill him and make him part of the riddle. He killed him but did nothing to help that poor girl lying on the floor in torn clothes… he must have sent someone to prepare the crime scene or even came himself. Footprints which didn’t belong to the dead man, a moved curtain in the kitchen’s window, a streak of blood looking as if someone smeared it on purpose and… Sherlock rushed to the bathroom, following the tracks.

When he saw the mirror, he groaned, resigned and angry at the same time.

_Call Sherlock Holmes :)_

This time the detective wasn’t going to follow the rules anymore. He came back to the living room, checked the girl’s pulse and, assured her life wasn’t in danger, he took the phone out of his pocket and dialled Moriarty’s number, deciding he had enough of texting and waiting for answers.

“What that’s supposed to mean?” he asked angrily before the man managed to speak.

“You mean the message on the mirror? Oh Sherlock, don’t be mad, I just couldn’t resist.”

“You told me to stay away from the police and yet you’ve done something like that! I won’t leave this girl with her rapist’s corpse and if I call the ambulance they’ll call the police as well and no policeman, even Anderson, is stupid enough not to connect it with us!”

“Clean the mirror and call your Scotland Yard’s greying friend. He’s in his apartment” Jim said, yawning, but it was hard to say if he was tired or bored. “You can talk to him if you want but don’t mention dear Molly. The code needed for the next destination is written on the fridge and that bastard’s arm but don’t bother with it” he sighed, this time sounding _dejected_ like a man who comes back home after a tough day at work and sees the hall demolished by his dog. “I’ve just thought about calling you, isn’t it a coincidence…? The case you were going to solve next… went wrong. And the next one will have been prepared in the afternoon. I’ll text you when the time comes.”

“Why are you telling me this…?” Sherlock asked, surprised by the turn of the conversation.

“‘Cause something _went wrong._ You see that’s… a fresh job. Everything may go wrong in such cases.”

“What _exactly_ went wrong?” He asked with emphasis but the man didn’t answered. “Jim, what…”

“Someone who wasn’t supposed to die actually _died_ and we’ve got a little… well, not so little… mess to clean. Are you happy now?” he asked with exasperation.

“The game doesn’t appeal to me anymore when I hear something like that” Sherlock answered coldly. Moriarty murmured something incomprehensible and then his apologetic tone turned into harsh.

“You don’t like riddles? _Learn to_ unless you want Molly badly hurt. You are mean, Sherlock, so, so mean to me… call your police-friends and go home and… you know? Since you’ve been mean, you’ll get the next hint only if you send me something _nice_. I guess your shirtless selfie will be enough to appease me a bit but if say one thing against it...” he paused meaningfully.

“Molly will die?”

“No, you moron…! I’ll make you send me some nudes and kill Ms Hudsooon” he said stretching the last syllable. “And I can assure you I’d want something explicit and she’d suffer before her death soooo much. I know I’m a monster” he finished and the last sentence compared to his threats sounded strangely… human. Sherlock felt that _maybe_ that was the chance to manipulate the softer version of Moriarty and finish the game but… he wasn’t John nor Mrs Hudson nor any _even Mycroft_ and he was often wrong when he tried to recognise human emotions without some logical clues. Even if he _was_ able to manipulate Jim’s emotions – assuming they existed –doing so by phone without a chance to look at him was doomed to fail. To be honest he wasn’t sure he could deduce _what was wrong with him_ even in a face to face confrontation.

“You don’t need to be” he finally said which caused the other man laugh madly and he was back in his psycho-version. Wrong move.

“Oh, Sherlock. You’ve read too many conspiracy theories about our union, which some romantic idealists came up with. You could _turn evil_ for me but don’t think I could be converted to an angel. If Lucifer became an angel the world would turn upside down.”

“You like takeovers. And Lucifer… had been on the side of the angels once.”

“So that’s poor comparison after all since I’ve never been” he said and this time even without seeing him Sherlock could hear a grief and a sense of injustice in his voice. The psychopaths are the most dangerous while suffering; that was the moment when manipulation would do more harm than good and the only thing he should do was _calming_ Jim to stop him from doing something really mad.

“I’m sorry” he said quietly, feeling as if he was talking to a hysteric child or aggressive dog. “Let’s delete that conversation from our mind palaces. I’m sure you have one so just delete it. I’ll call Lestrade, make a photo for you and wait for the further instructions.”

“Call the police anonymously” Moriarty answered after a few seconds; Sherlock’s words must have worked since the criminal sounded a bit calmer. “Use the nearest phone box. Don’t use this phone to contact anyone but me.”

“Of course.”

“I miss you so much I’d rather end the game, come to Baker Street and take you away” he said out of the blue with such a weird, disquieting voice that Sherlock felt shivers down his spine; he welcomed a familiar, hysterical giggle which followed with a relief. “Still, I cannot cope with an unfinished melody. Good luck, honey” he whispered, blew him a kiss and hung up, leaving Sherlock rather… confused.

How could this man’s mood change so fast…? From jokes to apathy, from madness to depression, to end the conversation with some twisted romanticism …? Half of those emotions must have been faked but which…? Sherlock did not even try to guess.

He looked around the room and sighed. He wasn’t only left _confused_ but also with a mirror to clean, a corpse and an unconscious teenage girl.

***

Once again he stuck in Mycroft’s house, this time – without anything to do. Before he came here he called the police from a phone box and reported he had heard some shots and screams, then left the residential area by foot and caught a taxi on the main road. He made a topless selfie as soon as he arrived here, feeling really odd and stupid but wanting it done so that he could go to the bedroom and have some sleep, even three hours. He wasn’t that tired – in the end, he was on feet for twenty not forty hours – but he wanted to rest in advance since he didn’t know what Moriarty planned for the rest of the game.

When he woke up he looked at the phone and saw more messages from John and Lestrade to ignore; he turned on both of his laptops, scrolled the news and the headlines of articles about the accident which had happened in front of the Scotland Yard’s headquarters and check his mailboxes – the official one for his clients and another which he had created for his private usage and which was far better protected. Most of time the second one was used only by Mycroft but lately it became more active because of his correspondence with Bill. To his surprise, his friend sent him an e-mail in which he was telling Sherlock that he had found some interesting information and they could meet to talk about it. If Sherlock was free and willing. The detective took his phone and dialled Bill’s number without a second thought.

“What did you find?” he asked immediately which caused Bill to burst into laughter.

“You’ve got to be quite busy. I sent you that e-mail two days ago.”

“Actually I’ve been. Moriarty. Haven’t you seen the news?”

“That policewoman is his doing?”

“ _Yes_ , and it was _me_ who found her few minutes before the building where she was imprisoned exploded.”

“Oh… _that_ they didn’t say.”

“I suppose they try to hush it up since they don’t know what’s going on. I’ve run away and hide from the police since I’ve got no time to give the statement.”

“Really? No time for the police but enough to check the Internet and…”

“Enough. Tell me what happened. Moriarty may call me anytime and resume our game so I don’t have time for your malice.”

“Does he give you breaks to sleep and surf the Internet? Lovely…” Bill joked but Sherlock’s angry growl knocked him down a peg. “Rose Patton. That’s the name of Moriarty’s grandmother. I spent countless hours trying to reach her but in the end I got wind of her whereabouts accidentally when I had an stupid idea that she might be as crazy as him and started checking exclusive nursing homes for elderly.”

“You’ve been hacking nursing homes’ databases…?”

“No, I’ve been calling and asking _how Ms Patton was_. In the first three I heard they didn’t have a patient named Patton but in the fourth…” he paused obviously wanting to build up the suspense. “They just gave her the phone. You wouldn’t believe how nice she is! Mad as a hatter, that’s true, but lovely. She thought I’m her eldest son - who is, as we both know, long dead – and told me she had been baking Christmas cookies with other patients or residents or _whatever_. Then she asked me how they grandchildren were doing as if they were small children.”

“Have you got the names?”

“Kevin, Owen and _James_ ” he said proudly. “I tried to cross-question her but she was unspecific and, oh god, really _crazy_. At some point she came back to the present and started talking with me as if I was one of them, Kevin, I suppose. And the best part: when she got a bit more _sane_ , she tried to make me guilty ‘cause _James visited her in the summer while me…_ well, Kevin… _haven’t done it since ages_. The problem is that few seconds later she went mad again, called me Sinead and started screaming that I had murdered my own children. Someone from the hospital stuff had to pacify her and the nurse took the phone back. Of course, I’ve been talking some shit and pretending to be Kevin. I quickly noticed she was new and she hadn’t known the patient’s families yet so I got what I could out of her.”

“Did she confirm that Moriarty was there?”

“Yes, right away. It turned out she started working in there in the summer about the time when Moriarty appeared to pay for his beloved grandmas stay. Apparently he always pays in advance for a year or even more.”

“Did she _really_ tell you something like that?”

“Oh, I told her that _me and my cousin James_ didn’t get along and that I was too embarrassed to call him to talk about money and that _I just wanted to be sure my grandma’s stay was already paid_. I’m not as good as you in, you know… acting, but she bought it.”

“What more did you learn?”

“Sadly, nothing about Moriarty since she had only seen him once and couldn’t remember anything even when I pretended to be a repentant relative who cares deeply about his cousin he’s not in touch with. The nurse wasn’t really helpful but when I was sure that’s the place we were looking for I just hacked their database. It was harder than I thought it’d be and I only managed to find a short version of Rose's patient records on their mainframe… I guess a decent IT technician could do much better. Still, I’ve learnt she’s got borderline personality disorder, had lots of depression and schizophrenic episodes and few suicide attempts as well. I copied the details.”

“Send me them later. Anything more?”

„Half a year ago her condition improved and lately she’s been almost sane. As far as I _deduced_.” He accented the last word as if he saw deduction as some kind of magical trick he managed to perform. “The attack she had when I was talking to her had been the first in months.”

“If Moriarty visited her back then…”

“It seems that a visit of beloved grandson restored her some sanity.”

“But mentioning the other two took it back. She remembered the babies her daughter had killed… She always knew that Sinead murdered them but _nobody believes the nonsense an old madwoman says_.” He sighed and rubbed his temple. “Kevin and Owen Patton. Have you investigated them?”

“Well… yes” Bill answered after a moment. “Both of them are classified as a missing persons after the WTC attack. But the hospital records… states something else. Owen isn’t mentioned in them so maybe he is indeed missing but Kevin is registered as Rose’s contact person. He and _James Patton_.”

“James Patton…” Sherlock repeated in disbelief and Bill laughed loudly.

“There’s more. I’ve only started the investigation but I’m almost sure Moriarty has been using that last name for ages, maybe even since high school. We don’t know how was his relationship with Sinead’s family. He must have hated them since he killed them in the end but… I think I begin to believe in your theory…”

“That he might have pretended it was otherwise” Sherlock finished. “And he could have asked his grandfather to let him change his last name, probably making up a false reason for the decision, I don’t know, that _he felt he was already Patton not Hawkins_ , something, _anything_. If we find the deeds of the inheritance…”

“We won’t make it from a distance.”

“I know. And I suppose we wouldn’t succeed in Clane as well and…” he was silent for a few seconds. “If Moriarty’s grandfather was a local politician, he must have had enough influence in County Kildare that changing Moriarty’s name and documents without raising suspicion wasn’t a problem for him. Maybe he even took care of it himself.”

“Or let his genius grandson change the files in the departmental computers.”

“Right… then he wouldn’t need to use his connections to cover it up. James Patton…”

“I’ll try to find something more about it.”

“You may try but I don’t have much hope you’ll… wait, you haven’t _tried_ yet?”

“I wrote you an e-mail when I discovered Lorcan’s wife’s name which took lots of time” he growled. “I spent whole night to hack the hospital’s server and…”

“Ok. So try to investigate James Patton and note everything you’ll find. Did you remember to cover your Internet tracks?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“That’s important.” Sherlock said. “I won’t be available a little longer than I thought and I don’t want you to draw attention without my help.”

“What do you mean by _a little longer_?”

“Until the weekend, I suppose.” He looked at the items scattered over the table; he haven’t found anything more during the second round so the only things that left was the vase, the ticket with Thursday date and the feather so he hoped he was in the final straight. “I call you as soon…” he paused when he saw a new message on his old phone “…as I can. I’ve got to go.”

A string of numbers and a timer counting down an hour.

He sighed, took the sheet with addresses, put his coat on and left Mycroft’s house once again, hoping the when he comes back the game will have been already finished and he only gather his things and return to Baker Street.

***

Sherlock had to release three more people, captured and unconscious, but all of them were random and he didn’t know any of them personally. _The third round_ started on Wednesday night and this time it was connected to a florist shop supplying funeral homes. He was forced to break into a cemetery – closed at night – where he found a fake grave with his name on it; when he was checking the names on other tombs using a flashlight, he got SMS saying that _he had run for Molly’s life_ but _there was one more person he had to sightsee London for._

Another round of running, looking for coded messages, clues and passwords, long hours on his feet, taxis – Sherlock had already spent a small fortune on them – messages with hints and the new theme: after the songs, hairpins and blue it was a single rose painted or printed on different surfaces. More kidnapped, drugged people but none of them was beaten or even bruised and at the end of it all – there were two bombs he had to find… but they weren’t even _live_. Another day came and passed and the clock on the post office struck midnight for the second time in this round. Fifteen minutes later in a nearby basement he found a tied but conscious Bill Wiggins, who looked perfectly fine and his appearance didn’t show any signs of struggle.

“I’m sorry I got you into this…” Sherlock murmured and started untying Bill as soon as he could but this time – unlike with Sally – he didn’t avoid his friend’s eyes. The man was looking at him with no resentment and cooperated with Sherlock when the detective was cutting the ropes and tapes.

“I’ve only been here half an hour and I haven’t started worrying yet” he said and giggled nervously, which indicated that he was more scared than he pretended.

“What happened?” Sherlock asked when Billed was freed.

“Moriarty just…” he paused and frowned as if he didn’t know how to put it into words. “He accosted me on the street _just like that_ when I was going to some guy to buy, you know… stuff. He was dressed just like my drug dealer and, well… he told me that he would be nice and wouldn’t call his men if I come with him and don’t make a fuss. And he was… really kind and gentle. He didn’t raise his voice even once. He asked me if I was comfortable before he left me here. He _apologised for the inconvenience_ and assured me you were on your way… You know? I can’t be even mad at him… how could I be mad at such a nice guy…? He was behaving as if he didn’t like the idea of keeping me here tied…!”

“People have died” Sherlock said thoughtlessly, when he finally started realising what it all meant. “Donovan and Anderson, you know, those…”

“…two policemen that framed you up three years ago.”

“…were hurt. And Moriarty realised I didn’t like them hurt” he finished the sentence tiredly and started helping Bill with detaching small fragments of tapes from his clothes even though the man could do that himself. “He hasn’t made the same mistake again since then.”

“You’ve got a lot to tell me” Bill said, crossing his arms and looking at him expectantly.

“Later” he sighed and peeked at his phone, deciding that this time he should start the conversation.

_I’ve found Bill. What’s next?_

_Nothing. Game over. You’ve won. Come back to Baker Street._

_Just like that?_

_Just like that. XXX_

“Do I want to know what the Xs mean?” Bill asked looking over his shoulder; Sherlock looked at him and shook his head.

“No. Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re not going to check…”

“No. I don’t like the game anymore. He neither. Last day there wasn’t any obstacles from him and somehow I feel that he erased those he had previously planned. He didn’t care about the game anymore.”

“He gets bored easily…”

“Same as me” he stated and gestured towards the door. “I’ve got to stop by Mycroft’s house to get my stuff before I come back to Baker Street. There are…” he paused and lowered his voice even though he didn’t suppose they’re being bugged “two possibilities why he gave up. Either he broke into your flat and found the files you’ve been working on or he really got bored and decided to end the game.”

“What do you think is more possible?”

“I don’t have the strength to think. But… if he really wanted he would hack my computer, bug the cell he had given me or break into my flat to find something in there.”

“But you think he didn’t. Why?”

“Because…” because Moriarty had run out of ideas how to flirt with him and he already knew which of them wouldn’t work, because he knew that threatening Sherlock’s friends and kidnappings could make the detective hate him and finally – he knew that if he didn’t stop acting like a psychopathic criminal and stalker, their suggestive messages would end and Sherlock wouldn’t meet him on his own will ever again. “Because I say so. He could have done it but he didn’t. Let it go.”

“ _Why_?” Bill repeated but this time Sherlock didn’t bother answering and without further explanation headed towards the exit. When he reached the door, he picked up a blue crayon from the floor and drew a small rose with three X-s on the frame. He was sure Jim was somewhere near, maybe even watching him right now and he felt that that leaving a message like that was the best thing he could do. Silent statement that he wanted to bring back the relationship they had few days ago – no game, no victims, no ordinary people disturbing them, no pointless scavenger hunt. He learnt what Moriarty’s goal had been… and there was no need to _play_ anymore.

“Could you tell me what it all is about?” Bill asked one more time when they got a taxi.

“Later. That’s not the time. I’ll tell you everything and let you draw conclusions on your own but for now…” he paused, tightening his fingers on the phone. “For now I’ve got to think about it alone.”

It was already past three in the morning when both men took Sherlock’s things from Mycroft’s house and checked Bill’s flat. The detective returned to Baker Street alone and got into the apartment by the window, not wanting Mrs Hudson, who might suffer insomnia, to know he was back. He immediately realised someone had been here and taking the incompetence of the searchers into account – he suspected Lestrade and his men. They didn’t find anything important since Sherlock knew how to hide things in his own flat but they made a mess and…

Tomorrow. He would take care of it tomorrow because right now the only thing he needed was to go to bed and stay there until evening. As if out of spite, he wasn’t able to fall asleep and after twenty minutes he took out sleeping pills from the nightstand, swallowed two and closed his eyes, counting out minutes the medicine needed to work.

His body was on the verge of sleep but his mind was still occupied with the thoughts of that seemingly pointless game he had played with Moriarty. He was connecting the puzzles making the picture more complete with the pieces he got thanks to Bill. The game began with Moriarty examining his senses, his perfect _seeing_ and a lot worse _hearing_ ; the second part was about his mind which the criminal underestimated and quickly realised he was losing his own game because Sherlock – even without all the clues – could get ahead of him. And the last part, roses, the symbol of emotions. Moriarty wanted to learn how to reach Sherlock’s heart and how he is reacting emotionally to a certain situations. And what he _learnt_ was the fact that he cannot get close to him killing or threatening his relatives and friends. That’s why he treated Bill rather gently, as if he wanted to say _Look, I can change for you, I said you couldn’t convert me into an angel and that’s true but I can try, for you, I can and I’m going to try even though it’s so hard for me. Do you like it? Tell me, does that mask appeal to you…? I’ll wear whatever mask you want me to, just tell me which of them you’d like to see…_

He has been dreaming for the first time in days. Once again, he was running through the city as prompted but he suddenly realised he didn’t know what he was looking for and when he started panicking – the dreams didn’t need to have sense, did they? – a hovel without windows and doors appeared in front of his eyes. There, in an empty room which floor was strewn with blue fathers Moriarty stood: dressed in the same clothes he had worn on Barts’ roof and, staring at Sherlock’s face, was asking him over and over again _if he had missed_ him.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was harder to translate than the previous one and there were moments I thought I'd never finish it ._. The next one is more than twenty pages and I maybe I'll split it into two to make translation/correction easier...? To be honest I got a bit scared when I realised how much text I’ve got yet to translate (580 pages…) and I just don’t want to lose my motivation ;)


	12. Barts – 1

***

Sherlock woke up on Friday afternoon feeling dizziness caused by the sleeping pills he had taken and the first thing he did was going to the kitchen to make some coffee. He was so sleepy and probably still a bit drugged that waiting for the water to boil he had a strange wish to start eating the coffee from the jar with a spoon. A few minutes later, standing in the shower in the streams of hot water he suddenly realised that today he had nothing to investigate or chase. All of his plans concerning Moriarty were long term and rather unspecific and besides – he didn’t have the strength to take care of them. He decided that he needed a day off to rethink everything.

Nevertheless, having dressed and eaten a breakfast he realised that if he planned to investigate the data from Bill tomorrow, today he would need to engage in more trivial issues. Issues, which unsolved, would distract him until they were done. He sighed, took his phone and without reading any messages from John and Lestrade – deleted them all and then texted the DI to inform him that he would come to Scotland Yard to make statements in an hour. He didn’t answer the phone but the policeman sent him a message a few seconds later - writing he was being awaited and that it’d be better for him if this time he saved his oh-so-smart remarks to himself. Sherlock wasn’t even surprised for he knew that most of the policemen in Lestrade’s department must have blamed him for Donovan and Anderson being hurt. He had never been beloved in Scotland Yard and the last events probably made it worse than before.

An hour later he was sitting in Lestrade’s office – the policeman mercifully took him here instead of to the interrogation room. He was being asked lots of questions: why did he wait for so long to contact the police? Why didn’t he tell anyone Moriarty was alive? What did he know about his doings? What exactly happened in the building where Donovan had been held? How did he get there? Sherlock’s answers were laconic and he told Lestrade only what had to be said to fill police reports and nothing more. No word about the game, regular texting with Moriarty, the trip to Brighton or his anonymous phone calls to the police.

His statements were recorded and Lestrade sighed heavily when he got the answer for the final question. Then, he ostentatiously turned off the recorder and put it aside. He was quiet for a few moments and finally he stared at Sherlock’s blank face.

“Time to talk more privately. Whatever you’ll say that’s between us. I have to know what’s going on so nobody else will be hurt. What exactly have you been doing past few days?”

“You know perfectly well. I’ve been tracking Moriarty to no avail.”

“After Sally’s release we’ve got eleven anonymous phone calls concerning kidnappings. Does it ring a bell?”

“Not at all” he said coldly. “When I was tracking that psycho, Donovan was the only kidnapped person I found and I know Moriarty was involved in that. Most of time I was surfing the Internet or wandering over the city with people from my homeless web.”

“You weren’t home.”

“Of course I wasn’t home, you wouldn’t leave me alone so I stayed at my brother’s house. He can confirm it” he stated with a smirk; however Lestrade knew Mycroft, Sherlock was sure he wouldn’t dare to contact him in that case.

“And, _obviously_ , you insist you haven’t been in touch with Moriarty.”

“Obviously.”

“John says otherwise.”

“John has no idea what’s going on since I’m solving that case without him and whatever he told you that’s due to his resentment towards me. Bear in mind he’s still mad at me after our little disagreement a few days ago. I guess he’s got the right to be mad.”

“He mentioned something about it” Lestrade said dryly. “But first of all he’s terrified that you…”

“I’ll be fine and he’d better worry about the people on whose lives he has any influence.”

“You’ve already heard from him?” Lestrade’s voice changed which made Sherlock frown.

“Heard _what_?”

“Well…” suddenly the man seemed confused. “About Mary. This morning she’s been taken to the hospital.”

“Oh…” Sherlock murmured. “That may be the reason.”

“The reason…?”

“The reason he’s been texting me. In the last few days it has been mostly complaints and statements about me not being a human. I guess he was right” he said, looking down. “At some point I stopped reading them.”

“Your friend’s wife is in the  maternity ward and you…” he paused and stared at Sherlock’s expressionless face as if he saw a ghost. “Do you care about it at all?”

“A shrieking creature is going to be born, for the next few months communication with it will be less than with a guppy and for next few years it’ll resemble communication with a moderately intelligent dog. Nonetheless most of people would be praising its alleged smartness, similarity to its parents and smiles even though all newborns are the same and the mimic reflecting human emotions doesn’t develop until…”

“Thank god you’ll never have children” Lestrade interrupted. “John was right saying you’re not a human _at all_.”

“Donovan was right as well calling me a freak. How is she, by the way?” he asked so blankly that the policeman gasped.

“How is she…? Do you even care or you’re just asking, because…”

“Apparently you should ask about your acquaintances health if they’ve had an accident, so _how is she_?”

“Better” the policeman said, still shocked by Sherlock’s behaviour.” She and Anderson are both better. If you weren’t yourself I’d advise you visiting them in Barts, ‘cause you know? It’s the right thing to do. But I doubt that in your case that’d be good idea.”

“I guess it wouldn’t” he said with a fake smile and stood up. “Is that all?”

“Yes, for now.”

“Should I send her flowers?”

“What…?”

“I was sent lots of flowers after I had been shot. My hospital room looked like a funeral home but apparently _that’s the right thing to do_.”

“Get out and don’t show your face around me at least for a month” Lestrade, whose shock turned into annoyance, growled.

“Or until another case you can’t solve will appear.”

“I assure you it’ll take a lot of time for me to contact you in _any_ case” Lestrade said dryly. “Get out of my sight, Sherlock, and take some friendly advice: watch yourself, since if you do anything suspicious which you aren’t able to explain I won’t hesitate to arrest you for obstruction of justice.”

Sherlock snorted at Lestrade’s ridiculous threat, turned around and quickly got out of the room, barely refraining himself from slamming the door. He was leaving the department ignoring angry looks that policemen gave him and as soon as he was outside, he rushed to the nearest newsstand, bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked three in a row. Only then he got a taxi and gave the driver Bart’s addresses, deciding to make a detailed plan on the way. For now he had only a vague vision in which he was going to peek at a few people in the hospital in disguise.

He checked if he got any new messages during the conversation with Lestrade but, surprisingly, both mobiles were silent. John must have already given up trying to get in touch with him and Moriarty was probably the only person left who would like to contact him. Before he arrived to the hospital, he took out and hid the old phone twice. _The evening_. If Jim wouldn’t text him until then, he would do it… even if the only thing he would have to write would be _I miss you_. And maybe few X’s.

In Barts, he started with breaking into the locker-room and changing into janitor clothes. He slicked his hair back with a cheap styling gel he found in some woman’s bag, covered it with an ugly cap, left his coat in an unused locker and started browsing the contents of others in search of cosmetics and accessories he needed. He darkened his face with a bronzer, drew a thin moustache and put big, plastic glasses on – the last one made him look a bit retarded but he didn’t really care. He stole a trolley with detergents and got out the room, deciding that for a start he would just look around without any purpose. No, his plans still weren’t detailed but for now… he just didn’t want neither to go back home nor visit Bill and he knew an unproductive afternoon in his current state would end up with drugs or shooting at the walls. Besides, his junkie friend was doing so well that maybe he should give him even more time to work alone before he’d join him. Of course he wasn’t going to let all the secrets be discovered by Bill and not himself but for now… well, he didn’t suppose Bill would really solve _everything_ alone and some new information could be useful if he was going to fly to Ireland soon.

Having made the decision, he entered the nearest empty doctor’s office and rushed towards the computer which wasn’t turned off or even _blocked_. Hacking hospital’s main server wasn’t hard with a PC already connected to it therefore it didn’t take long to find information he needed –Donovan’s and Anderson’s room numbers and Butler’s office location. All of them were on the orthopaedic ward – great news, he would save some time.

Whistling quietly he headed towards the staff elevator and, without arousing anyone’s interest, he entered the right floor. On the left was the door to the maternity ward and in front of him – orthopaedic. He had stolen a magnetic card for hospital workers from Molly’s office a long time ago and always had it in his wallet, so wandering around the building didn’t cause any difficulties. He bowed to a passing nurse - she didn’t even raise her head from the patient record she was holding – and then made his way to Anderson’s room. He wasn’t going to reveal himself, that was obvious, but… he just wanted to check his condition _himself_. And maybe hear something…? Anything, even a shred of memories from the attack which took place in front of the Scotland Yard’s headquarters.

The single-room was open and Sherlock just couldn’t resist from coming inside. He slurred a quiet _good afternoon_ , sprayed the door with detergent and started cleaning it at a snail’s pace, glancing at the beaten man lying in the bed from time to time. A woman sitting near the window muttered something incomprehensible when she saw him and Sherlock, recognising her as Anderson’s wife, decided there was nothing surprising in the fact that the man had an affair with the quite attractive, single friend from work if he was married to _that_ woman: a sloppy blonde with dark roots, at least thirty pounds overweight and with a facial expression indicating constant discontent. She came here only for appearances’ sake and was looking outside or at the phone instead of at her husband. And Anderson… didn’t look good. His face was swollen, he had a broken nose, clavicle and a few ribs and some stitches on his bandaged head. Moriarty’s men didn’t go easy with him and hit all the places that hurt the most so they must have been ordered to put him out of action quickly and effectively… even if the result of said effectiveness was irreversible. The policeman could have been killed by the blows but Sherlock didn’t suppose his death was Moriarty’s intention. He probably wanted to show off and treated it as display of force or a statement like _I don’t care about peoples’ lives_. Did he even know that Anderson would be with Donovan when the kidnappers were about to abduct her? Hard to say. And as a matter of fact it didn’t matter.

“Philip, I’m going home” the woman suddenly said, a moment after someone texted her. She had a shrill voice which clearly irritated her husband and her statement about leaving seemed to lighten his mood. “Do you need anything?”

“I’ve already told you _thrice_. Bring me the laptop cord.”

“And I’ve already apologised for forgetting it” she snorted, standing up. “Even bedridden you’re such a pain in the ass.”

“Just remember about it the next time you come” he growled and it seemed that he only realised they were not alone; he glanced at Sherlock but didn’t recognise him.

“When you’re speaking to me like that I really don’t see the point in coming here.”

“I can assure you l won’t lose any sleep over it.”

“You’re…” she hissed narrowing her eyes. “You just love being in deep shit, don’t you? We were getting on well and you fucked it up again! I’ve told you a thousand times to stop hanging out with that bitch and I was right! Three years ago you lost your job and went nuts because of her and that’s a miracle you’ve been hired back! And now what? You’ve got into troubles again and now you’re lying here doing nothing, while I’ve got to take care of the girls myself and…”

“Just remember about the cord” he interrupted and looked away. The woman swore under her breath and rushed towards the door, hitting Sherlock with her bag. The detective raised his eyebrows, glanced at Anderson and then – at the uncharged laptop on the windowsill.

“What brand is it?” he asked changing the timbre of his voice and faking strong, eastern accent. The policeman didn’t understand what he meant and when he looked at the windowsill that Sherlock pointed, he cleared his throat.

“Dell.”

“I’ll go to IT-room… to ask some IT-guy… for Dell cord” Sherlock stammered, trying not to laugh.

“I’d be grateful” Anderson said impassively and stared at the ceiling, apparently not going to socialize with an immigrant working as a janitor. Sherlock almost gave up the idea of helping him but… well. He _owed him_ something and besides he decided visiting server rooms was a good idea if he was already in the hospital. He hadn’t been there since his meeting with Moriarty at the pool, when he had been looking for some _Jim from IT_ files – but didn’t find anything since they had disappeared from HR department system just as Moriarty’s false persona disappeared from the hospital. None of his co-workers had anything to say about him and Sherlock quickly realised that he wouldn’t achieve anything talking with the technicians whose faces were turning blank when they were being asked about a man with whom they had been working for a few weeks. They barely remembered that the guy was called Jim Dawson but he had investigated the name back then and hadn’t connected it with anything.

Before he went there he stopped by Donovan’s room and quickly backed off, seeing Mary in a hospital gown and John. They were sitting with their backs to the door, quietly talking to the policewoman, so lost in the conversation they didn’t notice him. Of course he didn’t want to be recognised by them but at least he knew they were both in the hospital and he had to be more careful and stay out of that area. He went away from patient rooms and headed towards the orthopaedists offices which were located on the other side of the ward.

He found Corey’s room – he had one for himself as a deputy head of orthopaedics ward – and snorted with contempt. Did nobody in here close the door behind them? He rolled the trolley inside, put a window cleaner and a rubber on the desk and started browsing through Corey’s things. The laptop was blocked so efficiently that Sherlock gave up the attempts to hack it after a few minutes – he guessed that Moriarty took care of its protection himself. He stole a lab scrub and a stethoscope and hid it in the trolley, and then started looking through the files on the shelves. Patient records, x-rays, some employment records… Corey kept his employment contract _in here_ , was he out of his mind? And, well… his salary was at least thirty per cent higher than a doctor in his position usually got. A copy of the CV which Sherlock put in his pocket, expensive perfume behind a withered orchid. The desk… he opened the drawer with a skeleton key, pushed the stamps aside and took out a gilded fountain pen filled with violet ink and decorative ‘M’ engraved on its nib. Impractical, expensive trinket which indicated Moriarty was bestowing the doctor with costly gadgets. In the next drawer Sherlock found an old family photo, dated to the Christmas two years ago; he recognised Mrs Butler who stood there with an older guy and a nice twenty years old woman with a disturbing smirk. He took a photo of it with his cell phone and browsed through other cabinets but the only useful thing he found was Corey’s scratched ID card – he stole it and was about to leave, when he saw a small recorder behind the printer and some empty bottles of copier toner. At the same time he heard footsteps so he quickly took it and got to clean a glass case.

“What are you doing here?” he heard a familiar voice so he turned back with a feigned humility and made a startled snort.

“Mrs Sulivan told me… wash this” he murmured, using the same accent he presented Anderson.

“I asked her not to let anyone come in here” Corey said with no anger and then sat down on the chair. “You may leave it and take a break. It looks clean.”

“But Mrs Sulivan…”

“She won’t notice, she never comes here.” He smiled sincerely and… Sherlock immediately remembered how the man looked at Molly during the New Year’s Eve party which made him realize that Corey, even though he worked for Moriarty – no matter what the reason – was actually a nice and non-threatening guy, who really fell in love with his friend. And that he was nice enough he treated kindly even unqualified workers whom Anderson saw as a _lower social class_ and ignored. His respect to Corey, which had previously decreased, started rebuilding. The man probably didn’t know what Moriarty used Molly’s pictures he had taken for nor that her life had been in danger during the game. He might have been poor doctor and he worked for Moriarty but wasn’t a _bad guy_ and his feelings for Molly weren’t faked.

“Thank you. And… well… I’m going, doctor” Sherlock said and quickly left the office, not wanting the man to realise something had been stolen; then, he rushed to the nearest empty room to get changed.

Janitor clothes, a cap and plastic glasses were thrown into a trashcan and most of the bronzer removed; he put on the lab scrub, pinned Corey’s ID card backwards on it and hanged the stethoscope around his neck. Then he spent few minutes untangling his matted hair, wiped the fake moustache and put a spectacles he found in the room on. The latter was for myopic with astigmatism and it interfered his vision, but as long as he was looking over the glasses he was able to walk without tripping over his feet and he knew they were a perfect camouflage.

He left the trolley in the corridor and went to the server rooms a roundabout way through the top floor, which guaranteed he wouldn’t butt against John and Mary – they would recognise him in _any_ disguise in a second. After taking some broken x-rays to dispose from the lab he walked down the hall, uninterrupted by anyone. Barts was big enough that knowing every employee wasn’t possible and he was surely taken for a doctor from different ward who only came to orthopaedic for consultation, so no-one bothered him. Before he reached the server rooms, he had a few minutes to figure out the plan and when he finally got there he immediately started playing his part.

“Hello, guys” he started, using a higher than usual, cheerful tone. Only two heads turned around and after a short deduction he chose the younger man – quite handsome Asian guy in his early thirties. _Gay, single, bored with his life, night clubs regular with lots of one night stands in his sex-history, lazy, unambitious, worked on second shift, had an inherited flat three blocks from here_. “Listen, I need a Dell cord. I’ve run over mine with a chair and, well… I need a new one.”

“It may be difficult, but… do you have a minute, doctor? I’ll nip to the storage and be right back.”

“We can _nip to the storage_ together, I know how it looked like before it has been squashed. You know… _black and long_ ” he said, winking at the technician which did the trick since the man smiled and made a gesture encouraging Sherlock to follow him.

The detective, even when he was only acting, wasn’t the best flirt but that guy – Travis, as it turned out – wasn’t particularly fussy about it and took to talking upon himself. They didn’t even reach the storage and Sherlock already learnt where he lived, which university he had finished and how long he had been working here. He was a bit surprised, when Travis told him he had started five years ago since it meant he must have known Jim, even only briefly.

“Five years? That sounds like a long time” he commented, leaning against the wall and looking at him flirtatiously. “And I’ve never seen you before.”

“I rarely leave the server room, work is work” he laughed and opened a closet but didn’t attempt to check its contents. “And you’ve only just started working here, haven’t you?”

“I worked here few years ago but moved out to Ireland in the framework of contract. I’ve come back few weeks ago so it’s possible we’ve never met”.

“Oh, we surely haven’t. I’d remember you if we did, _doctor_ ” he said, leaning against the shelf - he must have done it on purpose to stretch the muscles under his tight t-shirt. Sherlock fell out of the role for a moment, alarmed by the fact that innocent flirt might turn into something more explicit if the man already decided to _demonstrate his value_.

“If you leave the server room so rarely it’s an incredible luck I’ve run over that cord” he answered and smoothed his gelled hair with an apparent nonchalance. “Actually I’ve met a Bart’s IT guy only once but as far as I know he doesn’t work here anymore.”

“You know, IT staff turnover is rather low in here… cushy job in public hospital, no reason to change it” Travis laughed and then asked the question Sherlock hoped for. “Who was that?”

“Oh, there was a guy… dated Hooper, that pathologist. What was his name…? Joey? Justin? Short brunet. He tried to date me but I wasn’t intere…” he paused, pretending that he only now noticed Travis’ peculiar face expression.

“I know exactly well who you are talking about. _Jim Dawson_.”

“You’re right! Jim. Why was he even goofing around with her?”

“I knew him a bit” Travis snorted with an exasperation. “He must have been really chicken-hearted about coming out and that’s why he was picking up chicks playing _shy romantic_ or something like that. Insecure freak from another planet. He didn’t talk a lot, spent most of nights in the server rooms, was suspiciously interested in medical staff and was wandering around the hospital like some kind of psycho-stalker. Good thing you blew him off. You know? He disappeared when I was on holiday and I’d have thought he had been fired if he hadn’t been in favourable terms with Patton and…”

“Wait a minute. Who?” Sherlock interrupted him, not believing his own ears.

“Owen Patton. Previous head of administration” he said shrugging. “That’s funny… he disappeared just like Dawson about a year after him. One day he was at work and the next – boom! – he vanished without a trace. Odd thing… No-one was bothered by Dawson’s disappearance and sometimes it was like no-one even knew he existed. He was kind of… invisible. And when he quitted his job, Patton came here and told us to forget that Dawson had been ever working here. Well, I only _heard_ something like that happened since I was…

“On holiday” Sherlock interrupted when he started figuring that whole thing out.

“Yes, and that’s another funny story” he laughed and scratched his chin. “And that’s related to Dawson as well. We were sitting here in the middle of the night to make a system upgrade when he got me to go on a TV game show, you know, one of those shitty things that are screened at night. Fools are calling, it cost a fortune but no-one knows anyone who actually won anything in that kind of game and if you got any brains you know that’s a scam. But he was convincing and I _did_ call, just for fun and… I got through immediately and I won _four thousand pounds_. I took a month off and went on the longest holiday in my life. When I came back he wasn’t here anymore and I couldn’t even thank that freak… and I had a lot to be thankful for since my holiday _was awesome_.”

Sherlock didn’t pay attention to Travis’ chatter which followed since after he said everything he knew about Moriarty he wasn’t useful anymore. He noted his number, promised to call him later and then – pretending to have something important to do on the ward – took the cord for Anderson and left the server rooms.

So… that’s how he found one of Jim’s cousins who supposedly had died in America several years ago and it appeared he was more connected to Moriarty than Sherlock thought before. When the criminal knew that the game with him – the first one – was going to start and he had to quit the job in Barts, he sent the only IT guy who was paying attention to him on a long holiday and then used his cousin to cover his tracks. Thanks to that the only person in the hospital who remembered Jim Dawson at the time Sherlock was playing with him was Molly, but the only thing she was able to say about him was some sloppy stories about dates with red wine and romantic comedies – all of them completely useless and a bit embarrassing too. The detective didn’t remember anyone mentioning Patton’s odd behaviour back then and he was almost sure he hadn’t heard about him a few years ago… but hacking the server once again and finding his files in HR department system was easy-peasy. Before he went back to the orthopaedic ward, he copied the data concerning Patton and the rest of the staff from the last ten years on his pendrive to compare it with lists of Brighton scholars… and any other list he would find with Bill later. Copying data from Corey’s recorder took him another few minutes but he needed to put it back in its place behind the printer in his office – the last thing he wanted was Moriarty to realize _his eyes and ears in Barts_ lost something so important… and he was almost sure that it contained lots of interesting footage. Corey’s room was empty so giving the recorder back didn’t cause any problems and few minutes later he was back in the hall where patient rooms were placed.

“Excuse me” he called out to the nurse which had ignored him an hour ago when he had been dressed as a janitor; this time when he played a well-groomed doctor with fancy combed hair her reaction was totally different – she immediately straightened up and smoothed her skirt. Pitiful. “I’d like you to take this to Mr Anderson” he said giving her a cord. “If it doesn’t work, call IT and tell them to exchange it.”

“Of course, doctor” she murmured and gazed at him lingeringly. Sherlock rolled his eyes, turned his back and headed towards Donovan’s room – this time the woman was alone and she was browsing some magazine with boredom. He wasn’t going hide from her and besides – a scrub didn’t make him as unrecognisable as janitors clothes and makeup. Before he went into the room, he took off the glasses which made him dizzy and knocked quietly, deciding that this time being less insolent than usually was a good idea. The policewoman raised her head and put the magazine aside, trying to hide her surprise to no avail.

“What are you doing here… dressed like that?” she asked a little more nicely than she usually spoke to Sherlock and then gestured towards the chair on which John had previously sat.

“Sentimental journey” he said, sitting down. “Can I have a minute?”

“I guess I don’t have a choice” she sighed, straightening on the bed. “What’s up? Do you want to ask about the kidnapping? I’ve already told Greg everything.”

“And I don’t think he would hand me the information over” he said and Donovan’s raised her eyebrows with interest. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

“You’ve got a row with him _too_?”

“You could say that.”

“So I don’t suppose I’m allowed to tell you anything” she said viciously and crossed her arms. “I trust him and if he doesn’t want to give you information, he surely has some reasons.”

“The reason is that I’m not going to tell him neither about the Moriarty case nor about my private life…” The latter made Donovan smirk which irritated Sherlock and he wasn’t going to hide it. “Yes, I’ve got a private life which doesn’t concern cases, kidnappings, the police and tracking the criminals and, by the way, you’re the ones who should do that and you’re paid for it. I’ve got some businesses and visits to set up which I cannot talk about with anyone but my brother. It’s Lestrade’s problem that he sees my doings as lawlessness and obstructing police work.”

“He’s my boss, in case you forgot.”

“Do you remember the case of the three murdered guys in the morgue which you were ordered to give up?” he asked as if he didn’t hear her. He already had an idea how to convince her to help and… there was no harm in trying. If her reluctance was caused by a sense of duty to her superiors, the authority of the government should be sufficient.

“Secret service took over the investigation” she said slowly.

“Secret service means _my brother_ ” he stated, staring at her face; the woman didn’t even blink so she must have known about Mycroft’s work in MI6. “I won’t obstruct your work, I promise. I need to know what Moriarty’s men did because it’s connected to the case I’ve been given by the government. I guess I don’t need to warn you that’s a state secret and you mustn’t tell anyone about it?”

“Damn…” the woman groaned. “I should talk with Greg before I tell you anything but…” she was silent for a few moments. “Ok. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I owe you and unlike most of the Scotland Yard I don’t think you’re the one to blame for… what happened to me and Philip. I can’t stand you and everybody knows it so the idea of Moriarty kidnapping _me_ to hurt _you_ is absurd. You saved me and I _do_ owe you, ok? I suppose I can never repay you but I may _start_ repaying right now. So…” she paused and looked into his eyes.“What exactly do you want to know?”

“If you know that something is secret and Lestrade would get mad if you answered some of the questions… you don’t have to answer” he said slowly, choosing the words carefully, afraid that Donovan might change her mind. “Was Moriarty in there even for a moment?”

“I think so” she answered after a few seconds. “Well… let me put it this way: I didn’t believe he survived and I’m still not _absolutely_ convinced it was him. I saw the files concerning his death myself, he died on Barts rooftop three years ago and whoever I saw it mustn’t have been him.”

“Recently it turned up that lab results and his death certificate had been falsified. My brother has already taken care of those who are responsible for it. Moriarty is alive and well.”

“Fuck…” she mumbled nervously. “Well, in that case… yes, it was him. It was fucking James Moriarty or Richard Brook or whoever this man is, the same guy who framed you three years ago. He looked kind of weird and _weak_ but when he appeared and started speaking, all those muscles were obedient as if he was a _god_.”

“And what did he order them to do that they had to be obedient?”

“I’d rather say what… what he forbid them” she answered and look down with an embarrassment. “Some of them… had tried to force themselves on me and he got completely mad when he realised what they had been about to do. I have no idea how he saw it since they stopped as soon as they got the tip he was coming but… he just walked in, looked at me and then at them and said that he was not going to tolerate tenth-rate thugs within his ranks and then… he shot two of them… just like that. He told the rest to get rid of the bodies so that they _wouldn’t ruin my view_. He used exactly these words.”

“Did they leave you alone with him?”

“Yes but he didn’t speak a word to me until they came back. He was installing the explosives, checking some electric stuff… I’m not an expert but it looked like he _was_.” She shrugged, not going to pretend she could say something more about it. “Besides I wasn’t at my best condition and didn’t pay attention to his doings. I was only surprised he decided to do that by himself since he must have had some technicians to take care of it.”

“Scientific mind, the best of all. He likes keeping everything under control” Sherlock said thoughtfully. “What happened next?”

“When his men came back he told them to have their eyes on me and took one of them outside to check the installation. The rest of them didn’t try anything and they didn’t even look at me. I stayed with them for around fifteen minutes and then they got a call and just got out. I had been alone until you came.” Sherlock analysed her words carefully and then spoke again.

“How did Moriarty look like?”

“Short brunet in a suit. You know what he looks like” she said with exasperation.

“I mean…” he started, trying to be patient “what impression did he make. You saw his photos from the trial. What would you say about him _now_?”

“I really don’t know…” she said and started pulling the ends her locks nervously. “He appeared small around all those muscles but before that I hadn’t really had the chance to take a look at him so he must have always been like that. I think he limped a bit. He looked tired. He was glancing at his phone from time to time. I don’t remember anything else.”

“When you stayed alone, did he behave differently?”

“Yes” she said immediately and more confidently than before. “When they were around he acted like a cold psycho, was more lively and… crazy and dangerous at the same time. I’ve got the impression that his men were afraid he might blow the whole building up with all of them inside without any reason.”

“And with you…?”

“He was…” she paused and wondered about the right word for a few seconds “more ordinary…?”

“As if he stopped acting tough?” Sherlock suggested but the woman didn’t seem convinced.

“That’s not exactly that. Well… that too, but... that wasn’t the case. He was still _weird_ and… damn, I don’t know how to describe it. When they were around he was dominant and aggressive and when they disappeared he seemed weak in a such annoying way I really wanted to hurt him just to find out _how weak he is_.”

“Have you got any idea why he behaved like that? It’s obvious he acted” Sherlock said but he didn’t add which Moriarty’s version he saw as _acting_.

“To humiliate me that such a loser was able to kidnap me…?” she said but it sounded as if she didn’t believe her own words.“Honestly, I don’t know. That guy is a…”

“Freak?”

“Worse than you” she said with conviction. “I should stop calling you that since I’ve seen _him_.”

“All right” he said, standing up. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

“What? You don’t want to know how his men looked like, their cars and weapons and…”

“It doesn’t matter at all. I’ll leave tracking a _tenth-rate thugs_ to Lestrade. I’ve got a bigger bird that needs to be caught” he said and Donovan laughed in spite of herself.

“If I had known you wanted me to answer that kind of questions I wouldn’t have been reluctant to talk to you” she admitted, amused and relieved at the same time. “So… that’s it?”

“Well…” he started, remembering his conversation with Lestrade which still made him feel a bit bitter. “I hope you feel better” he murmured, getting uncomfortable right away.

“Yes” Donovan answered with a frown. “My ankles actually have been sprained, not broken. It should heal in two weeks. Philip’s condition is much worse.”

“I’ve seen.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“You could say that. I stopped by his room an hour ago. I’ve got to go and…”

“John and Mary was here an hour ago” she interrupted and Sherlock sat back with a sigh, deciding that leaving right now would look suspicious.

“Is their opinion about me worse than your co-workers’ or just as bad?” he asked, not knowing how to start the conversation.

“I have no idea what you’ve done to him but John is mad. He blames you about what happened more than anyone else.”

“I’m not surprised. And Mary?”

“She tried to calm him down and she threatened she was going to go into labour from nerves if he wouldn’t stop behaving like that.”

“And did she?”

“No, her contractions were a false alarm. She went back to her ward and he got a taxi to get something from home. He is going to come back in the evening. I don’t mean to pry but you need a frank conversation with him if you don’t want to push him away for good.”

“I will keep that in mind when I decide I want to stop _pushing him away_ ” he said and immediately regretted he stayed and said so much. “Don’t tell anyone I’ve been here. Well… you can tell Lestrade if you think you should.” He stood up and, not waiting for the answer, rushed towards the door. “Take care” he said before leaving the room and the woman didn’t try to stop him. He put the glasses back on and headed towards the exit at the fast pace.

He was about to leave the hospital and go back to Baker Street to go through the data he had copied but when he was already in the stairwell he stopped, remembering there was another person whom he could… _should_ visit. John was going to come back in the evening and since he spent the whole day looking for information concerning Moriarty he might continue it, even though some people would see it improper in the current situation. And _the current situation_ was Mary’s pregnancy which could turn into labour in any moment.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to split the chapter into two and I guess I'll do the same with all those which are longer than 20 pages in Polish.  
> If there are some grammar mistakes that should be corrected - don't hesitate to tell me:)


	13. Barts - 2

***

Sherlock spent a minute in a stairwell before he made a decision. Mary had been a hit man and if she had been able to kill for money she should have guts to speak about it too. Pregnant or not, she wasn’t a woman that needed to be treated like a fragile princess and she probably considered tiptoeing around her to be insulting. He thought everything over and then headed towards the maternity ward, where he asked a nurse which room Mary Watson stayed. Even though the woman was more inquisitive than the one he had been talking to before, she believed the lie about him bringing Mary’s records from her previous visit in a different ward. As soon as she told him what he wanted to know, she went back to her duties and probably forgot about the conversation.

Sherlock still had some doubts about talking to Mary; her current state wasn’t the case but he was afraid that John might learn about his visit and go mad. He would be furious and…

…and what? Would he come to Baker Street to make a scene? Sulk? Threaten to tell Mycroft about his game with Moriarty or to stop solving the cases with him? Stop talking to him? All of this didn’t matter anymore or had already happened. The truth was that John, even though he still influenced Sherlock’s thoughts, was moving more and more away from him. Deciding to give Mary a second chance, he closed some part of his relationship with the detective forever. Sherlock, on the other hand, locked all the doors John had closed and threw away the keys when he started playing with Moriarty – probably the only person in the whole world whom John truly hated… Sherlock's most important pressure point which was previously his only friend was replaced by _the consulting criminal_ at the exact moment when he texted him X’s for the first time.

It was John who should have got them. In another life, in a reality where Jim and Mary didn’t turn their lives and feelings upside down.

Because you chose her.

Without further doubts he headed towards Mary’s room, opened the door, walked to her bed and asked her a question before the surprised woman managed to speak a word.

“What was Moriarty like?” he said, pulled himself a chair and sat down on it so heavily it creaked.

“Hello, Sherlock, nice to see you too” Mary answered sarcastically and sat on the bed, covering her belly with the quilt. “Have you heard from _the other doctors_ , that my contractions would come back if I got angry enough? By the way, that’s rather poor disguise.”

“I didn’t get enough respect as a janitor” he stated which made Mary smirk.

“Get to the point. What are you doing here and what’s the question supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what you’ve heard” he answered, moving closer and seeing that Mary’s face got distant and cold. “I don’t want to upset you and I won’t tell John about it. I’ve got a case that needs to be solved and I’m going to talk to _anyone_ who might be helpful. So… What was Moriarty like?”

“Why do you think I know anything about him?” she asked with amazement which sounded almost honest. “You and John… and your brother, I suppose… are the only people I know who’ve ever met him. Do you want an outside view? Is there no-one else who could stand you for more than fifteen minutes so you’ve come to me?”

“The last time I met Moriarty he told me you had been working for him” he answered even though he have to admit she was so convincing he would probably fall for it if he didn’t know the truth. The smirk disappeared from Mary’s face and her expression turned to one he had seen in Magnussen’s office seconds before the woman had shot him. “He had no reason to lie to me and he knew I’d talk to you about it someday. Bang, bang, that’s not a secret anymore.”

“What do you know?” Mary asked coldly, taking off the mask of sweet, funny blonde that she was showing John and their friends so often.

“Eastern Europe, that one I had deduced even before I talked to him. He told me you had been one of the first contract killers he had hired in there and that you had been working for him for a few years… he said it had been long-term so I guess more than three years. You’ve acquired the Mary Morstan identify in 2008 so it means he recruited you in 2005 or earlier…” He look at her face and frowned. “Earlier, I guess. 2003…?”

“2002” she answered shortly.

“You were younger than…” he cleared his throat “than I thought. You worked for him when you were still a special agent, didn’t you?” Mary nodded and looked down but it was hard to say if she felt overdue remorse or was just angry that Sherlock knew her secret. “Was it regular or just…”

“Three big deals at the beginning, the next one a year later and then it became regular” she confessed with a blank face.

“Why did he decide to recruit you?”

“I wouldn’t call it like that” she said and looked at Sherlock warningly. “I worked in the underworld scene and I just heard rumours every time someone was looking for a henchman. I was bored and in need of money so I decided to give it a try.”

“And you liked it” he murmured and Mary didn’t even try to deny it. “And that’s why at some point it became your main occupation.”

“Something like that. What’s your point? Do you want to torment me with the past I’ve put behind with such difficulty?” she asked, her voice cracking. “If John found out he wouldn’t survive it. He has forgiven me for lying to him but he _wouldn’t_ if he knew I worked for Moriarty. It would break him, it would break _us_ … That’s why you’ve come here, isn’t it? To take him away from me.”

“You’re wrong and I’ve already told you I’m not going to tell him anything” he said, a bit annoyed.

“So why are you doing this to me? Why are you asking about Moriarty? Whatever happened between me and him is ancient history. Nothing connected to Great Britain, nothing you’d be able to accused him of.”

“I don’t look for evidence of his criminal activity anymore.”

“So what are you…”

“ _Him_. I want to know everything _about him_ ” he said and fell silent with no idea what questions he should ask. Mary was staring into his eyes a few seconds and finally she frowned and gasped from shock.

“Oh my god…” she whispered, covering her mouth. “So that’s why you’re not going to tell John…! It’s not about me or him but _about Moriarty_ and the secrets you’ve got with him…! What have you got yourself into, you idiot…?”

“I can’t tell you” he murmured, lowering his head and swearing in his thoughts that he let his guard down and Mary was another person who saw through him. “Yes, it’s about him. I want to know everything but my purpose isn’t to destroy him.”

“But to understand him. To get to know him” she said so quietly Sherlock barely heard her. “Of course. You _definitely_ won’t tell John about my work for Moriarty and you don’t need to worry about me as well. I guess that’s the point where we really shouldn’t hide anything from each other anymore. We are bound by a secret none of us wants to be discovered by John, aren’t we?” Mary asked and Sherlock hesitantly nodded. “So, one more time. What _exactly_ do you want to know?”

“How was he when you worked for him?” he started even though there were lots of other, more important and specific questions he’d like to ask.

“The best employer you can dream of” she answered and although there was some reserve in her voice she sounded honest. “He was straightforward, knew exactly what he wanted, gave unambiguous instructions, paid on time and paid a lot. Much more than I would have earned in my country.”

“What did you think of him when you met?”

“Actually I’ve never met him and I had been already working for him two years before I even heard the name Moriarty. We used coded messages and all the job offers was given to me by a secret network. I’ve only talked to him twice.”

“Twice?” Sherlock asked, surprised, since he was sure Jim had mention only one conversation.

“The first one was an emergency when the plans changed at the last minute while the second one…” she paused. “The second was when I decided to quit. I was given a job so nasty that I just… wasn’t able to do that. I refused and the guys who tried to hire me… weren't happy about it. The ground started burning up under my feet and I knew that my death sentence was already signed. And that’s when I got in touch with him since I knew that he handled these kinds of cases as well… and asked him for advice. Surprised?” she asked seeing Sherlock’s shocked expression. “Your new addiction isn’t as scary as you thought, is it? Of course, he contracted lots of killings and he probably committed all the crimes that exist but he was able to _help the sinner who wanted to repent_ as well. He transferred me to England and told me where to look for a new personality. He even gave me an apartment to make things easier for me. And took care of some files when I started a life as _Mary Morstan_.

“If you wanted to start a new life and put your past behind, for god’s sake…! Why did you start dating John…?” he asked but Mary only clenched her fists and looked away. “You must have known about my game with Moriarty and the fact John had met him as well since every single person in the country knew about it” he said accusatory and crossed his arms, waiting for an answer. He was sure Jim wasn’t completely honest with him when they talked on Barts rooftop but needed to Mary to say it aloud.

“I… I thought that if there was one person in London who knew anything about Moriarty, who was reported missing after the death of _the fake genius-detective_ , it would be John Watson” she finally said, avoiding his eyes. “I know what it sounds like but…”

“You used him” Sherlock said coldly.

“I was going to, _yes_ ” she confirmed tiredly. “But in the meantime I fell in love. Human error.”

“I wouldn’t believe you if I…” he paused. “Human error. I know a little bit about it.”

“Exactly” she sighed and fell silent again, giving Sherlock time to analyse everything he had heard. He was angry that Mary started hanging out with John for her own purpose, that she had been lying to him at the beginning of their relationship and probably faking her feelings as well but… he did exactly the same thing to Janine and he had no right to condemn her.

“You wanted to reach Moriarty. Why?” he asked, considering the subject of her initial motivation closed and unworthy of further analyse.

“To tell him that anyone can change if they want to. Maybe to thank him. I don’t know. I just wanted to meet him and I was devastated when John told me he was dead, not only missing.”

“But you stayed with him despite the fact that you didn’t need him anymore.”

“Human error” she repeated quietly and they both fell silent, deep in thought. Mary was the first who decided to speak again and her voice changed to nice and calm; she wasn’t playing anymore and just came back to her _new normality_ , which she had been building the past few years. “Your turn, Sherlock. You owe me something for my confession.” The detective snorted but didn’t protest aloud since she was probably right. “What exactly have you been doing after the show on TV screens? And please, do not tell me you’ve been only _tracking Moriarty_. I’m not an idiot.”

“You don’t tell John anything” he made sure and only continued when Mary nodded. “Actually _I’ve been_ travelling around the country tracking him. I met some people, checked lots of suspicious names and got so much unexpected data that sometimes I was getting a migraine from thinking about it.”

“Interesting. I’d really want to know what news gives a person like you a migraine.”

“These are his secrets not mine and I cannot tell you” he said firmly.

“All right” Mary answered. “Can you at least tell me about the past few days? All these kidnappings and…”

“It was just a scene” he said shortly. “He decided to play with me one more time but… it turned out none of us wanted a game.”

“And what did you want?” she said with emphasis but the corners of her mouth lifted. “Sherlock, what’s going on between you two?”

“That’s a little more difficult to explain” he murmured indistinctly.

“Oh, I’ve heard that before” she snorted, clearly amused. “Come on! You know, I’d rather you sleep with someone else than my husband, no matter who the person is.”

“I do not sleep with him!” he protested immediately and Mary only raised her eyebrows. “You’re the third person who thinks I do but that’s not…”

“You’re denying as emotionally as John when someone suggested he was gay and that you and him…”

“And he was telling the truth just like I am now” he snorted angrily.

“You don’t need to have sex to be non-platonically attached to someone. I’m not blind” she said mockingly. “Interesting indeed. From the two of you, you’ve always been the one who doesn’t care about what people think. But suddenly you started… caring. Why?”

“Because there are relationships which are far less acceptable than others.”

“And you care about what is socially acceptable and what isn’t? _Really_?”

“Yes, I do, if breaking society’s rules means exposing someone to danger and I expose _him_ every time we’re getting in touch.”

“You expose lots of people to danger when you let yourself play games with him.”

“People I don’t care about at all” he said sharply and bit his lip after their short dispute. “John mustn’t find out about it, no matter which direction…”

“He just mustn’t find out” she finished and opened her mouth to say something more, when they both heard someone clearing their throat. Sherlock, with his back to the door, couldn’t see who came into the room but he _heard it_ , he would recognise this walk anywhere and Mary’s frightened expression was the proof he was right.

“What I _mustn’t find out_?” John asked and although his voice was calm one look at him was enough to know the man was on the verge of outburst.

“What have you heard?” Sherlock spoke, standing up and feeling a bit more confident when he could look down at the shorter man.

“Enough.”

“What exactly?”

“Everything from _what is socially acceptable and what isn’t_ ” he said, clenching his fists and Sherlock paled, realising that the deduction was… or should have been… obvious. “What are you playing at?! You’re in touch with that psycho and you’re worried it may give him troubles?! Are you out of your mind?! I thought you’re looking for him to trap and arrest him, not that you treat him like a favourite, stolen toy which needs to be hidden from the parents!” The words made Sherlock speechless since he couldn’t believe John concluded that he was hiding Moriarty’s whereabouts from the police _just for fun_. “I know there’s something more and I want to know what” John added after a moment of silence and looked at Mary, whose lips were clenched tight and her eyes avoiding John’s gaze. “Oh, so you’ve got secrets with him, don’t you? In that case I’m all ears. I’ve got enough. And don’t try to tell me that’s no big deal, since I know it is!”

“Secrets are called secrets for a reason” Mary said, placing a hand on her belly which immediately stopped John from screaming and his voice sounded much calmer when he spoke again.

“I don’t want more lies and hiding his games with Mori…”

“We weren’t talking only about Moriarty” she interrupted before he managed to finish the sentence, at the same time protectively putting her free arm around her belly and looking straight into John’s eyes. Sherlock congratulated her in his thoughts that she could manipulate her husband using such simple gestures. She was better than him, definitely.

“So what were you talking about?” John asked but his insistence turned into some kind of surrender as if he continued the conversation only because he wasn’t able to say _let’s just leave it_ yet.

“About something you didn’t want to know and you promised to never ask about it again.”

“And what does your past have to do with this moron’s doings?”

“Nothing but it has something to do with the conversation you’ve overheard” she growled. “We may go on with that pointless chat but you may as well let it be and say something like _how are you feeling, honey_? or _Sherlock, I’m glad to see you alive and well, I was so worried about you when you were chasing the most dangerous criminal we’ve ever met_. The last option is asking me to give you the flash drive containing information about my past. I’ve got a copy. I can you where to find it so you’ll be able to come back home and read it while I’ll be giving birth to our child.”

“I… I don’t…” he looked down, ashamed. “I haven’t changed my mind. I don’t want to know it.”

“So leave it” she said with emphasis and Sherlock was almost sure she managed to smooth things over when John turned to him.

“Mary’s right. I’ve gone too far. But you… I should punch you so hard that you wouldn’t go to the orthopaedic ward on feet. I’d say it’d be most fun if they put you in the room with Anderson but it’d be a punishment for him as well and he has been already punished enough for everything he has ever done. Do you even realize he could have been killed because of your games with Moriarty?”

“I’m aware of that.”

“And doesn’t it bother you at all?”

“To be honest, not really” he said even though it wasn’t the truth… but he wouldn’t be able to confess he had felt guilty enough to visit Anderson and see his condition himself. And that he felt relief when he realised the man felt good enough to argue with his wife and complain about lack of a computer cord.

“You’re… you’re a heartless monster.” John’s voice was barely a whisper but somehow it was worse than screaming. Sherlock closed his eyes and hung his head, expecting to hear everything which till now he had only been reading in SMS’s. “Don’t you care about anything other than playing with Moriarty? Don’t you care that people were kidnapped, beaten and traumatized, that some of them _died_ since I’m sure the explosion near Baker Street…”

“It was about Mycroft” Sherlock said quietly which stopped John for a moment.

“You knew that Moriarty was going to kill your brother and you did nothing…?” he asked in disbelief.

“ _I didn’t_ but now I know he won’t do that again and that was my only mistake since…”

“Your ONLY mistake?!” John exploded so suddenly that Sherlock flinched. He knew it was the wrong thing to say but… what else would be better? Silence? Everything else would be a lie and ignoring John’s comments wouldn’t do any good as well.

“Yes, my only mistake. The only innocent people who were killed were Magnussen’s bodyguards but that was beyond my control… and those agents from the government car but they had known perfectly well that working for a secret service is far more dangerous than a job in a library.”

“Lestrade told me that wasn’t the only dead…”

“The only innocent ones.”

“Oh, so now _that’s_ how you’re excusing yourself?”

“I don’t need excusing myself since I didn’t kill anyone. The only people that are to blame are those moronic policemen who fell for Moriarty’s lies three years ago. If they hadn’t been such mindless idiots, Moriarty would have been locked up in a high security prison and he would have had different problems than taking over the world. And I would have stuck on Baker Street, taking all the small, boring cases since without Moriarty none of them is more than a seven.”

“Are you telling me that since it got boring without him, you started looking for him to play again but this time you weren’t going to turn him into the police?” Sherlock didn’t answer, knowing that denying would sound unbelievable and just pitiful. “Oh my god, that’s true. You really don’t care that someone could die, that you’re breaking the law and…”

“John, enough” Mary said angrily. “We’ve already heard what you think about Sherlock’s behaviour and your complaints are getting boring, because, you know? You complain for one reason: he’s doing it all without you and you’re only mad because you’re jealous about everything he does alone and doesn’t tell you about. You miss the past, when you were a team and… don’t try to interrupt me!” she hissed, when John was about to speak again. “You’ve forgiven me even though I lied to you in cases much more important than _not being serious enough about Moriarty._ Take a chill pill and think things over, since your bizarre relationship stopped being funny a long time ago.” She looked at Sherlock and continued. “Same goes for you. I’ve been telling you both to talk sincerely since it all began… maybe some punches in the face would help you as well but I’d be grateful if you didn’t do that in front of me, especially in my current condi…” suddenly she winced and pressed both hands on her belly. John immediately rushed to her and Sherlock, seizing an opportunity, took few steps backwards. Before he turned around, he noticed Mary winked at him, still simulating contractions – it would have amused him if the reason had been something else than John’s hurtful words.

There was no point in spending more time in Barts. He walked straight to the locker room, took his clothes and didn’t even bother to change – he just put his coat on, tousled his gelled hair and headed towards a back door, fortunately avoiding anyone from the hospital staff. It took him a few seconds to get a taxi and he didn’t even remember his way home. He was agitated after his argument with John which shouldn’t have happened and he was aware that without Mary it would come to blows. And that surely wouldn’t end with some small scratches since John was furious at him and Sherlock himself wasn’t saint and wouldn’t just stand and silently listen to John accusing him of god-knows-what.

Especially since some of his suspicions were dangerously close to the truth which had to stay secret.

He might never be able to be completely honest with John anymore and even though he knew it before, now he was more aware of it than ever. No more long nights spent on the case, no more jokes nobody besides them understood, no more glances which sometimes carried more meaning than words. The wall between them was getting higher and higher and while two weeks ago it impeded communication between them now it made it almost impossible. Every single text to Moriarty was another brick in the wall but Sherlock cemented them with neither regrets nor doubts. These were probably to come later.

Only when he was back home he managed to stop his bitter considerations and started analysing everything he found out before John appeared and complicated everything. With a cup of tea in his hand he thought about the few weeks when Moriarty had been working in Barts, about his Irish cousin and Corey Butler who had been sent to vacation back then… about Donovan’s words – since if someone as dull as her noticed that Moriarty’s behaviour had been bipolar, something must have been up… and finally Mary. Whose confession was the most surprising since he couldn’t come up with any idea why Moriarty hadn’t told him about a situation which… which might be called _a good deed_. Besides he was surprised, frightened and fascinated at the same time that Jim was only twenty three when his criminal network was extended to the Eastern Europe and he was already hiring contract killers in there. Previously he had supposed Moriarty a was few years older than him but actually it was only _two_ years and… he was young, _so young_ when he had already achieved so much…! And it might mean that his obsession with Sherlock started when he was only beginning his career as a consulting criminal - before he became a terrifying and influential _Napoleon of crime_.

Of course, most of his previous theories turned out to be wrong when he started investigating Moriarty’s past. It was clear that he needed some help to organize and get away with murder of his family, that he must have been independent and had at least one extra personality at the age of eighteen and that he had started building his empire as a child. There was still a gap in his life story but even before filling it with information Sherlock knew that being twenty-something, Moriarty was becoming one of the most influential criminals in Europe while he at the same age… he was experimenting with drugs, pissing off the students at his university, making Mycroft mad and their mother cry over her younger, beloved son’s wasted potential and talents.

And what was _his_ experience at the age of twenty three? Four rehabs, few gastric lavages, some ribs broken in a few stupid street fights and twice as much psychologists who gave up on him even though Mycroft had offered them a fortune. No friends and no lovers. Some small cases which he had been taking for fun between one bender and the next, debts which Mycroft had regularly paid for him and a growing list of people who had seen him as a twisted, obnoxious freak.

At the age of twenty three _Moriarty_ had money, great imaginations, plans, vision and power while Sherlock had nothing.

But then, everything changed, since Mycroft had never gave up on his brother like the psychologists did; Sherlock met a few people who somehow _could_ stand him and who helped him come down to earth while Jim… was still high above, alone on top of the world with no-one to catch him when he started falling down. Still, he had no doubts that Moriarty’s genius enabled him to achieve some spectacular and amazing things and that he achieved success much faster than the detective, even if he used his talents for rather inglorious purpose… but, in the end, _the glorious ones_ were Mycroft’s business, didn’t they…?

But now it turned out that Jim – besides planning murders, kidnappings and frauds – sometimes was taking small and almost non-profit cases and was able to show people empathy which Sherlock often lacked. He helped Mary put her past behind, gave Irene a chance to reunite with Kate and when it came to Travis… if he had been afraid the man might start talking too much, he could have just killed him instead of sponsoring his long vacation. And the last thing: when Donovan was molested he might as well of ignored it or even give his men a silent permission to rape her. _They tried to force themselves on me... he got mad and shot two of them_. Well, not exactly a _good deed_ but it might have been the most important thing the policewoman had told him…

At some point his thoughts and theories which had been flowing through his mind slowed down. Both his mobiles were silent while the silence in his apartment was only distracted by the rain outside the windows and barely audible radio. He had no idea why, but he started falling into an unpleasant state where nothing made sense, all the goals seemed to be pointless and shallow, his motivation – gone. Every person which could took him out of his sudden emotional lethargy was unavailable, mad at him or far away. Cigarettes…! But the only effect smoking a few sticks had, was a strange anxiousness which arose in him again and made him run around the apartment, taking things and putting them back with a compulsive need for something to happen, anything besides the odd visions which stormed in his mind… all the memories of Moriarty, every single word he had ever heard about him, fragments of the conversations he had heard in Barts, Corey’s smile, Travis’ flirts, Mary’s _knowing_ facial expression and John’s anger.

He took his phone – the new one – and put it back, smoked a cigarette and in the next hour he repeated the sentence four times. He felt that some drugs would help but, as if out of spite, the only medications he had in the apartment were sleeping pills and painkillers. None of them would help and he wasn’t desperate enough to go out in such weather and look for a trusted drug dealer.

He started playing with his phone and finally he decided he just had to turn to someone who would tell him _what was wrong with him_. Mycroft wasn’t suited to help in emotional issues, Mary might be giving birth right now and turning to someone who knew nothing about his current state was pointless. The only person left was Irene Adler but he hesitated before he texted her… the fact he felt he needed help was alarming itself for usually in a condition like that he just ran out, shot at walls, played violin, took drugs or did a few of them altogether but now he wasn’t able to do anything else than wandering around his cluttered apartment.

Thus… Irene.

 _Why does another person think I sleep with him?_ He wrote without a second thought, sent the message and then took a pack of cigarettes and smoked three in a row, waiting for Irene’s answer.

_Oh, Mr Holmes, to think that you were the one who told me I should never let my heart rule my head. Don’t you see? You could hide your thoughts from me but you have no idea how to hide your feelings. That’s why everybody knew you loved John and that’s why they’ll soon notice you’re falling in love with Moriarty._

_Today I met John and talking to him hurt. Thinking about Jim hurts even more. Is this what you call love?_

_Think about each of them, look in the mirror and you’ll understand everything. Don’t write me back, just do that. Good luck, Mr Holmes._

He frowned, dubious about her absurd advice and took a pack of cigarettes one more time but it turned out to be empty; he angrily threw it into the fireplace and laid down on the couch, staring at the ceiling. The radio in the kitchen started making strange noises – he supposed the heavy rain was interfering with the signal – but he didn’t have the strength to stand up and turn it off. He would have spent another unproductive hour in that position if the radio’s rustling noise hadn’t stopped and turned into a loud song which lyrics he couldn’t recognise because of the sound of rain outside. Something clicked in his mind and he jumped to his feet, took his old phone and rushed to the kitchen. When he stood in the doorway, he immediately froze and the words he heard made him laugh hysterically.

_...and I want you so much that I just can’t resist you… it’s not enough to say that I miss you… I can’t forget you… been going crazy from the moment I met you…_

_I miss you too. XXX_ He wrote, making two typos before the message was sent. He took two steps back and picked a small mirror from the table. He closed his eyes, listening to the lyrics … _don’t be scared… I’ll see you through the loneliness… don’t even think about what’s right or wrong… ‘cause in the end it’s only you and me and no one else is gonna be around…_ and he slowly opened his eyes again, going to deduce himself for the first time in a very long time.

The mirror fell out of his hand, hit the table and then the floor but it didn’t break. Sherlock took a deep breath and put his shaking hands on the table top, biting his lip so hard he almost broke the skin. Irene was right, so absolutely right… just like Mycroft, Mary and – to a certain extent – even John. They were all right and they all knew there was something going on, that he was lying to everyone and wasn’t honest even with himself. Everybody knew it but him, the consulting detective and genius who supposedly saw everything but in this case was completely blind and deaf – even though now it was clear that the songs weren’t just Jim’s confessions but the reflection of the emotions he _himself_ had been feeling for a really long time.

When he noticed a new message on the phone, he couldn’t get himself to read it for a few seconds, too shocked by the thing he had just realised. The icon was blinking obtrusively making fun of him and tempting at the same time. He took a deep breath and when he read the message, he chuckled quietly, embarrassed and nervous.

_Do you like the song?_

_More than the previous ones all together. It’s not enough to say that I miss you. You promised you’d come._ He texted, this time – without making any typos.

_I did. I’m sorry. I’m in Scotland but I’m coming back on Monday… Tuesday at the latest._

_No more games._

_No more games. Just you and me. XXX_

***


	14. Ireland - 1

***

Even the worst news was better than data gaps which interfered the complete picture and sometimes those the most shocking could make everything clear _at least_. And that’s what happened when Sherlock looked in the mirror and saw things he had seen in different faces so many times _in his own_ : a feeling which he was able to classify with the help of pure logic and past observations, even though it was incomprehensible to him. So… he was _in love_. Just like that, without a thunderstorm or butterflies in his stomach, with no dreams about a shared future or sex and all the idiocy which John had sometimes written in love-letters to his girlfriends.

The realisation turned his world upside down but his depressive lethargy caused by the emotions he hadn’t understood till now completely disappeared. Listening to Jim’s song, he booked a flight and then entered the repeat button; he was packing a bit chaotically, smoking too much and devouring all the leftovers from the fridge without looking what it was, since he supposed he wouldn’t have the chance to eat any nutritious food in the following days.

On his way to Heathrow he texted Mycroft - to inform him he was flying on a trip to Ireland -and Bill - asking to send him the materials concerning Jim and his cousins he had already found. None of them answered him back but the reason was probably the ungodly hour, not anything else. His strange mood must have affected his common sense, because he texted John as well. He was almost sure that in the morning, reading the SMS, the man would think something bad happened to Sherlock and would start calling him to ask if he was alright or… to tell him angrily he should stop doing drugs.

 _I’m sorry for everything that happened lately. I can’t tell you anything and I don’t think I’d ever be able to. I’m sorry for everything I’ve ever done even though I don’t understand half of the things I should apologize for. I’m having a flight soon so I’ve got to turn off the phone. Hope Mary’s ok_.

He sent the message even though he knew it may have seemed weird and alarming, almost like a suicide note or something equally dramatic. But what did he have to lose? He couldn’t turn back time nor erase his feelings. Some people were able to end relationships with dignity, some of them were honest saying _let’s be just friends_ but you needed emotional intelligence and maturity to do so and Sherlock had none of them. However, Janine taught him that breaking up in friendship is better and he decided to try at least. Rejection from John would still hurt but probably less than it would have hurt a few hours ago… before he looked in the mirror and realised that there was someone other than John who was able to become his whole world. There was an alternative to the walls of Baker Street, long evenings in front of the fireplace and chasing the criminals and _that’s_ why Sherlock knew that even if he lost it all it wouldn’t be the end of the world. He had already lost the feeling of belonging and the first person in his life who had understood him without words, praised him and made him feel complete; he had lost the mornings with coffee and sweets, the blog which he had always called lame, and finally - all the glances and gestures which seemed ambiguous to everyone except of John himself.

The past few days were the proof he was able to handle losing it all. There were _new_ ambiguous glances and gestures awaiting, and the future without the man which had been his beacon of normalcy and humanity was possible. Alone he was nothing but proper _human catalysts_ changed everything and even though Jim could get the worst of him… he would be a cure for boredom and tremendous emptiness.

Boredom and loneliness were the only things he was afraid of but they weren’t the problem anymore from the moment he had looked in the mirror and understood what had been happening to him. And that was the only thing that mattered – never mind Mycroft clenching his fist in anger, Mrs Hudson wringing her hands and Lestrade pulling his hair out. He didn’t suppose that a relationship with Jim, _any_ kind of relationship with him, would be healthy but on the other hand loneliness wasn’t healthy as well. And all the mistakes he made before killing Magnussen were the final proof he just couldn’t be lonely anymore.

A message from Bill, promising to send him the materials concerning Jim’s family, came at two o’clock a.m., when Sherlock was wandering around the airport, while Mycroft called when his briefing was about to start. The detective declined the call, turned off his phone and smiled insincerely to a man checking documents and patiently waited until his baggage was checked. _Third night shift in a row, working extra hours, mortgage, pregnant wife,  affair with a neighbour… a male neighbour?_

“Enjoy the flight, Mr Holmes” the man said, giving him the documents back; Sherlock bowed politely and followed a small group of people who had chosen a flight at this ridiculous hour.

The flight was short but Sherlock managed to use the time well. After pushing thoughts about John aside – it was surprisingly easy – he sorted out new information in his mind palace and started planning the journey to Jim’s hometown. He was going to get in touch with Alice Flynn, who might have been able to tell him in which part of Clane the Pattons had lived; then – visiting a local cemetery, checking the address which he had found in Owen’s files in Barts, maybe some talks with the neighbours - someone must have remembered _something_. He frowned, wondering why the journalist didn’t mention Jim’s two cousins even though she should have heard about them. Of course, there was a possibility that Rose remarried and Owen and Kevin were her but not Lorcan’s grandchildren but Sherlock decided it was unlikely. They were older than Jim and he was born when Sinead was still very young so the dates just didn’t seem to match. They may have been one of her elder brothers’ sons, that one which had been killed by Jim but… for now he couldn’t rule out other possibilities.

The most important thing he planned was visiting the nursing home where Rose Patton stayed and Sherlock supposed it might be the most problematic too. If she was mentally ill and her files specified contact persons, he should expect that common people wouldn’t be able to meet her. Therefore, he had to pose as Kevin Patton – but he didn’t know how this man looked or if he had ever visited Rose; if he hadn’t, false documents would be enough and Mycroft would be able to arrange them in few hours but if he _did_ , even only a few times… things were getting tougher. Theoretically he might use a different disguise – a doctor, janitor or technician but as far as he knew from Bill, the nursing home was a private facility of high-quality and its security must have been better than Barts’. Besides, he knew the hospital like the back of his hand so… well. Posing as Kevin was the only option left.

After the landing in Dublin, Sherlock headed towards one of the nearby hotels and settled in the cheapest room, planning to read the files from Bill, rent a car and drive to Clane and get a room in a pension. It was almost seven a.m. when he unpacked and connected to the internet; then he changed into more comfortable clothes, hang a _do not disturb_ sign on the doorknob and reluctantly turned on both mobiles. The old one was silent and he barely restrained himself from sighing with disappointment while the current one had a few new messages and notifications which wasn’t surprising. Bill informed him that he had already sent him everything, Mycroft wanted to know if he flied to Dublin without troubles while John…

In the first SMS John asked him if he had taken some drugs and an hour later informed that his newborn daughter’s name would be Alice and that Mary was going to leave the hospital in two days.

Sherlock closed his eyes waiting for a wave of emotions which he had been repressing for months, for a thunderstorm and burning nostalgia for the old days which would never come back – John was a father now and nothing would ever be the same again. Seconds passed but nothing happened. A time bomb, which could explode any time…? It had to be that but seconds turned to minutes and when Sherlock finally opened his eyes everything looked the same, the morning was still foggy and cold, people were walking down the streets at the same pace and the ground didn’t crack open. He took a deep breath.

Nothing.

Was it really a time bomb…? He started doubting because when the information about John’s and Mary’s child really hit him, he didn’t feel as miserable as he thought he would be. Besides, even though he had been honest when he had told Lestrade that a newborn was like a guppy to him… now he felt kind of relief and joy that someone who was – or had been – close to him was happy and _achieved a new level in the game of life_. Ordinary people were _happy_ when they were raising a family and that’s what they lived for, didn’t they? Long-term relationships, marriages, mortgages, steady jobs, family cars and _children_. He may have not understood why people sought things like that but he knew that John _did_ , even though there was a time a civilian life had bored and depressed him.

John was with someone else, had a child and didn’t need him anymore but Sherlock didn’t feel that his world fell apart because of it and actually he was… _happy_ for his friend. His SMS-congratulations to John and Mary was sincere and the only lie he wrote was a promise he would visit them soon. Maybe someday… Maybe when he wouldn’t be afraid it _was_ actually a time bomb which would explode if he saw John holding a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl and heard all the people saying _how much she took after her parents and how sweet she is smiling_.

 _I haven’t taken anything_. He added after few seconds, carefully put the phone aside and, still a bit tense, went to the balcony, taking his old mobile and cigarettes with him.

He was smoking slowly, inhaling the smoke shallowly and staring at the foggy sky and pale clouds from between which rays of winter sun were shining shyly. Sherlock wouldn’t call the weather nice but it was better than the heavy rain in London; he laughed weirdly when he realised he was starting to look for a second meaning of the fact that he left behind the past in the raindrops and what was in front of him, however foggy and gloomy, was slowly getting light and pastel, while sky’s greys were turning to blues by the minute… the corners of his mouth lifted. He glanced at the half-burnt cigarette, inhaled the smoke twice and throw it out of the balcony, not finding an ashtray.

The old phone was silent but Sherlock was _not_ going to be – and when he texted Jim writing three X’s without any comment he didn’t think it was sloppy or pointless. He looked up at the sun which showed between the clouds for a moment, forcing him to squint his eyes and a second later he felt the phone vibrate.

 _Miss me?_ He read and the answer was so obvious he typed it automatically.

It’s not enough to say that I miss you.

_Oh, Sherlock, I didn’t suppose you’d like this song so much. How was the flight?_

_Short. I prefer flying during the day but the case is the case._ He wrote back, unsurprised by the fact that Jim already knew about his journey, especially since he was using his real documents and his doings couldn’t be a secret to people like Mycroft or Jim. Besides, he told him few days ago that he was going to visit his home country.

_If you have the time for sightseeing, visit Trinity College. Dublin Castle and National Museum are both overrated._

_Because there aren’t crown jewels which you could steal and put on?_

_Would you like to see me in them again?_

Sherlock smirked when a bit too unambiguous answer occurred to him. He froze, realising that it would be definitely too soon to admit in what or _without what_ he’d like to see Jim. Instead, he stared at the phone for a minute and before he decided to answer he scrolled their conversation.

 _I don’t want more shows for the whole England._ He finally wrote, concluding that it would be safe enough.

_So you’d rather have me all to yourself?_

Sherlock hesitated again but well… admitting to a question like that didn’t seem to cross a borders. The borders. _Any_ borders.

_Definitely. XXX_

Sherlock put the phone in his pocket and walked back to the room, closing the balcony doors quietly. He didn’t bother to read the answer from Jim, knowing the he must have sent him only X’s, which were already the last words of all their SMS conversations. He took a deep breath, placed the laptop on his knees and stared at the screen for a few minutes, unmoving. At least he shook the odd sentiments off and logged in to his mailbox; he opened the message from Bill and started reading, deciding to start from the files his friend had mentioned before. The mail itself was rather short and contained only the information that the man had learnt about things he would rather stay unaware of and that Sherlock would find everything in the attachments.

Rose Patton’s patient record and documents concerning the nursing home didn’t contain anything which could surprise Sherlock since Bill had already told him the most important things. There were details about Rose’s condition but the most important thing was the fact the she had been mentally ill for years and had some personality disorders as a young woman. Of course, back then disorders such as BPD weren’t as commonly diagnosed as they were now, people suffering from them were seen as hysterical or malcontents and their problems were often trivialised or misdiagnosed and treated with random antidepressants and sedatives. Rose’s record indicated that now she was diagnosed with few different mental illnesses but Sherlock wasn’t sure if the doctors were right about her… in the end, she was related to Jim Moriarty, whose personality was impossible to determine even for Mycroft who had him imprisoned for a few weeks.

The record didn’t said a word about the fact that Rose’s only daughter, Sinead, had suffered from mental disorders as well but it wasn’t surprising since Sherlock supposed that she had never been officially diagnosed. If the rumours were true, her father had treated her like a princess and forgiven her all her quirks and emotional outbursts, trivializing it and pretty sure that his precious daughter was just moody, changeable and maybe a bit weird. Sherlock knew perfectly well what happened because of Lorcan’s ignorance and there was no point in thinking about it right now. Sinead was long dead and the dead ones rarely spoke years after their deaths.

Because he still didn’t make up detailed plans concerning meeting Rose Patton, he decided not to waste time and opened another file which happened to be a simple program containing the list of students from Brighton - with notes, comments and filters which enabled sorting data. Bill prepared proper reports and wrote some formulas thanks to which Sherlock could add another people to the database and check if someone he wanted to add wasn’t already listed. It wasn’t a programming masterpiece but making it surely took some time and Sherlock was really grateful to Bill that he took care of it since he himself was too lazy to waste half a day on something so dull. Before reading the rest of the files, he texted his friend to thank him and then sent him an e-mail with the list of Barts’ employees, asking to add them to the database and compare to the people that had been already entered. He didn’t want to do that himself, especially since he was already in Ireland and was going to investigate Jim’s past in his home town.

Besides, Bill sent him some information about the nurse he had talked to, an address and a map but Sherlock just scrolled it deciding to concentrate on a separate file with few attachments. At the beginning of the word document Bill repeated that Owen and Kevin had been reported missing in the USA and then described his facebook research – he was picking on Clane random residents, hoping he’d find a local gossip who would tell him something interesting. He claimed it was really hard work and that _he was more happy before he learnt the truth_. Sherlock frowned and scrolled the page, wanting to know what Bill had found out. After his friend’s complaints about talks with people from Clane, there was a skype conversation pasted. Bill introduced himself as Kevin’s friend from the USA, who was trying to get in touch with him after coming to Great Britain and he was talking to a woman named Joyce, who lived in Clane as a child.

It turned out that Joyce remembered that Patton brothers left the country in mid-90s being about twenty and have never been seen in Clane again. Surprisingly, the woman had no idea they were reported missing after WTC attack and was sure they were both alive and well, living an _American dream_ and Bill didn’t tell her what the truth was. Two years after their moving out, their parents, uncle, aunt and grandfather were murdered by some psycho but the brothers didn’t come to the funeral and _yes, people had been gossiping about it for years, that’s why she remembered it_.

Since that moment the conversation got interesting because, _of course, she knew their names, that wasn’t a secret!_ Lorcan Patton, Terry and Elaine – Owen’s and Kevin’s parents, their uncle Dale and aunt Sinead Hawkins… _who was such an weird woman, and unlucky one too, since a dozen years earlier her little twin sons had been murdered. She had an elder son as well, yes, I knew him, Jim was the same age as me! As far as I know, his biological father took him to Dublin back then but I’m not really sure… and few years later he moved back to Clane to live with his mother again. It was his last primary school class and then he was accepted to some elite school in Dublin. I didn’t really have the chance to get to know him better because since then he only visited Clane on the weekends and holidays. No, I don’t really know if he could be in touch with Kevin, Jim was seven years younger than him. And you know? My sister dated Kevin when they were about twenty and as far as I remember she told me that for some reason Patton’s kind of… didn’t get along with their little cousin. But it was years ago so I might be wrong, besides… what a grown up guy could have against a kiddo like Jim? I could give you Peggy’s e-mail… No, I don’t think she’s still in touch with a guy she dumped twenty years ago for some vague reasons… What reasons…? You know, I’ll give you her e-mail after all, you could write to her yourself. She never speaks about it and it would be a bit odd if I’d ask her about Patton out of blue after all these years._

Sherlock shivered anxiously when his laptop froze and he had to wait few seconds before the next attachment opened. Bill copied him a laconic message he had sent Peggy in which he repeated the lies he had told her sister – _he met Kevin in the USA, wanted to get touch with him again and was already in Europe so he decided to write to her and ask if she had any contact with him since he knew they were dating when they were younger_. The answer from Peggy, which the woman sent only ten hours ago, made Sherlock want to close to computer, pack his things, come back to London and not search information about this doomed family ever again.

_Dear Sir… Dear Sir! That’s how I start every letter but it sounds ridiculous when I’m writing to this fucking prick’s acquaintance. Yes, I knew him and I still curse the day I met him and even though he was attractive since I’m disgusted with myself that I’ve ever got close to a monster like him and didn’t see how repulsive and sick he was. Yes, Joyce was right saying I dumped him and never told anyone what the reason was but after so many years it doesn’t matter anymore, especially since that psycho – and that’s something my sister doesn’t know – died in WTC attack. Maybe now you’ve stopped reading to grieve for your dead friend but I’m not going to let you think he was someone worth grieving for, so… that’s the reason I dumped Kevin: I found out he and his brother had been fucking their younger cousin and as far I know he was in primary school when it started. I ran into them. I saw it myself. I saw what they were doing to him, I saw everything and I’m not even able to write what exactly I witnessed, but believe me, it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. I didn’t go to the police because they threatened me and I was too young and too stupid to understand I should have done it no matter what. Even now, after all those years I feel guilty for not doing anything to help this poor child and I know I have no excuses. Both Kevin and his brother move out of Clane a few months later and never came back so I did everything I could to forget about them. A few years ago I accidentally found out they died in the USA and you know what? I cried from happiness the whole night, thanking God that he is righteous after all. I hope they were dying slowly and painfully, knowing perfectly well that their death is coming and that now they’re burning in hell._

Sherlock read Peggy’s e-mail twice and clenched fingers in his hair, unable to move for long minutes. He couldn’t force himself to check the rest of the attachments from Bill, needing to get over everything he learnt. Years ago Mycroft mentioned there was a possibility Jim had been abused as a child but he didn’t pay attention to that theory, being sure that Jim’s disorders were only caused by seeing a murder in his youth. But now… now he _knew_ there was something more in Donovan’s words: Jim protected her from rape because he had experienced it himself. He didn’t care about that woman at all but he wasn’t able to let her suffer _like that_. He clenched his fist even tighter and then he jumped on his feet and ran to the balcony, taking out a cigarette and seeing how much his fingers were trembling.

He had no idea what he felt when he lit the first cigarette and inhaled so fast he started coughing. He was getting more and more aware of the fact what Peggy’s confession meant and his mind started filling with unwanted visions with faceless people – little, terrified Jim, beaten and molested by his adult cousins and a childhood his crazy mother made a living hell. A few years with his father’s loving family, when he was scaring his step-mother’s friend and teachers and manipulating students in Brighton… and the moment he was forced to come back to Clane… the moment he thought he’d be able to take revenge on Patton's but… he tightened his fingers on the cigarette so hard that he crushed it. But he became a victim again and even though he managed to kill his relatives like he had planned being only twelve, it probably didn’t give him much satisfaction and his mental health had been ruined forever. Once… even a few months ago the realisation wouldn’t impress him and he would consider the fact Moriarty had been sexually abused as _logical_ , as he became the psycho-criminal he was. Now he wasn’t logical at all for emotions displaced all the rationality. _He was in primary school when it started. The most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen._

He came back to the room fifteen minutes later, feeling that his legs were completely stiff and then sat down on a chair; he closed the e-mail which still made him sick and returned to Bill’s file, even though he wasn’t sure he was ready to go on with reading. Finally he scrolled the page until he reached a short note from his friend.

_Below I wrote down all the addresses and contacts I managed to find but, I’m sorry, Sherlock, I just couldn’t continue the investigation. I hope you won’t ask me for it… and I hope that you’re not that freakish machine some people think you are you’ll understand why I can’t do that. Actually I hope you won’t contact that woman at all but… you’ll do what you want._

Sherlock, still emotionally drained, went through the information, noticing a few addresses: Lorcan’s Patton house - that one where he had been murdered, the last Sinead’s and her elder brother’s houses; localisation of the cemetery where all of them had been buried, the name and address of the primary school in Clane. And the last thing - a dozen e-mails and phone numbers of Clane residents who Bill pointed out as people who probably could help him.

A few class photos from different times; group picture taken on a school trip, another one from someone’s wedding, three from homecoming. And two small photos scanned from memorial school albums, signed as Kevin and Owen Patton. A bit grainy but not so much for them to be unrecognizable on previous pictures. He was sure he had never seen Owen before while Kevin seemed familiar but… he wasn’t able to think about it right now. Maybe he was a bit alike his brother or Sherlock had him memorised in his mind palace and he could find out who he was if he dug deeper. But not now, not in the moment when his mind was filled with disgusting images of what two brothers had done to Jim.

When he was closing the file, his hand was shaking. There was only one document left, titled _James_ but he was reluctant to open it. He was staring at the screen for a minute and then took his mobile and started typing a message to Bill. It was nine o’clock a.m. so the man could have been still sleeping because of his night activities but Sherlock didn’t want to call him – texting was better even if he would have to waited for an answer for a few hours.

_I’ve read about his cousins. Does the “James” file contain such a revelations and I should prepare myself mentally?_

Surprisingly, Bill answered almost immediately, before Sherlock managed to move and go to the balcony to smoke another cigarette.

_No. I guess you’d like this one._

_Addresses of his schools? Contacts to his friends?_

_Joyce was the only person who remembered him, so no schools or friends. Just open the file._

Sherlock stared at the message for a moment, not sure if he was ready for more news. He waited another few seconds and made a decision: Bill stated he’d like it so he supposed it wasn’t something gross or shocking, since the man was a lot more sensitive than him in many ways. He clicked the file twice, waiting for it to download and open; the document started with the conversation Bill had with Joyce on skype and Sherlock scrolled it, annoyed that he saw the same thing for the second time. However, this time the messages weren’t cut at the moment the woman suggested contacting her sister.

_That Jim-guy… you know, it seems he visited Kevin once when we still lived in the USA… the short brunet? Bill wrote, back then still unaware of the fact what Jim’s relationship with his cousins were. Maybe they didn’t get along when they were younger but it changed?_

_Well, you might be right… but still, I’m not in touch with Jim so I won’t be able to help you. Believe me, he just disappeared and it was almost like he ceased to exist after finishing school._

_Really? That’s funny ‘cause he seemed a real go-getter and I just can’t imagine him being invisible to anyone. Maybe we’re talking about someone else after all?_

_Wait a moment, this time you intrigued me. Jim Hawkins a go-getter? Aliens attacking us sounds more likely._

_Are you in there?_

_Yes, give me a minute._

_Ok._

_Sorry, I’ve got a problem with my scanner._

_Sure, I’m here._

_Ok. I’m sending you something._

_Oh fuck, that’s really him…!_

An empty page in a word document and on the next one… a scanned picture, torn in the middle, signed _April 1990._ Taken in a classroom, with few children dressed up for a school play, smiling for the camera. A teacher showing something outside the window, a tray with apples on a desk, some chalk below the board, ripped school bag from which books had fallen out and a small boy squatting next to it, who looked at the photographer at the moment the photo was taken.

Plain clothes in neutral, grey colours, which looked too gloomy on a child; a shirt definitely too big for him, jeans torn on his right knee, white sneakers on which some disturbing patterns were drawn. Surprise and irritation on the pale face, black, uncombed hair which hadn’t been cut for few months, bony fingers clutched on a notebook and dark circles under round eyes, which looked so furious, ghastly and insane that looking at the picture gave Sherlock chills.

_Really? You recognised him? That’s the only photo of him I’ve got and to be honest he doesn’t even look like himself._

_I’m sure it’s him but it’s a shame you don’t have more photos… you know, more normal._

_I’m sorry I can’t help you. Jim didn’t like photos. Do you see how he’s looking at the camera? As if he wants to kill the man taking the photo._

_What do you mean by saying ‘he didn’t like photos’?_

_He has never appeared when class photos were taken, on the school trips he avoided people with a camera, he has never taken part in school plays… he didn’t even let his picture to be put in memorial album._

_How do you remember all those things?_

_Because he was crazy about it. Actually it was the only thing which made him show any emotions and he rarely speak at all. When a teacher told him to deliver a photo for the memorial album he literally jumped down her throat. My friend told me about it. He was suspended for a week and it was really shocking since, you know… he was the best student in the school and one of the quietest too. He was a genius, until then he had never caused any problems and suddenly he behaved like a degenerate from a dysfunctional family._

_You’re right, that’s a bit odd._

_And it was. But it is said that geniuses are always a bit crazy so maybe that’s the case._

_If he left Clane to attend some elite school, he surely must have been genius… I guess he was learning all the time to prepare for all the school contests, wasn’t he?_

_You know… actually he wasn’t interested in any contests at all. And it was odd as well. He was so smart, the best student our school had in years but he didn’t show off with his knowledge. He didn’t even go to graduation to take his report card from the headmaster in front of the whole school._

_Really odd._

_You’re totally right._

The rest of the conversation didn’t concern Jim since Joyce started asking Bill about his hobby and occupation and he – mixing fiction with reality – told her he was a chemist who had arrived to London for a contract. _I live in a charming loft downtown and if you come to England I’d love to meet you. Oh, that’s my phone number._ They finished the pointless conversation which lasted almost an hour, in the meantime – becoming friends on facebook. Bill pasted a link to Joyce profile, which didn’t contain much information but lots of photos quite easy to deduce from. _Slim woman in her mid-thirties, has lost at least twenty pounds in past few months, natural redheaded, lots of freckles which she covers with heavy make-up, not really pretty and looking a bit older than she actually is. Works in a cosmetics company in Dublin in a product department… not in touch with any of her childhood or high school friends, probably burned her bridges when she left to Dublin after graduation. Single, no children. Party animal. Doesn’t like travelling, afraid of flying, alcohol issues, was taking drugs as a student, a flat in central Dublin, aquarium fish with few expensive species…_ ENOUGH _._ He didn’t need to know that and more deduction would only clutter up his mind palace with useless information. The only interesting thing was the fact that Joyce and Bill were still in touch on facebook and that Bill had prepared for the role really carefully: he modified his profile to convince Joyce he had really lived in the United States, changed his date of birth – aging himself five years – and besides added several dozen _American friends_ which he surely found on game pages where facebook-addicts were looking for other freaks to exchange virtual gifts. Creating a new account would have been easier and safer but – at least – Bill didn’t use his real second name.

He stopped thinking about his friend who seemed to like hitting on elder women online and closed the browser; then, he reopened the file containing the only Jim’s childhood photo which he had ever seen. He expanded it as far as he could and stared at boy’s eyes which were getting less mad and furious and more… _familiar_ by the minute.

Bony hands. Deep shadows under his  eyes. The hair, a bit too long, cut and combed differently than Jim had now. An elongated abrasion on the cheek, which had to look really bad few days before the photo was taken. A bandage on Jim’s right wrist, almost invisible under the sleeve, unless someone was looking at the picture as closely as Sherlock did right now.

If they had met as children would they have hated each other or felt the same connection they shared now? Or maybe they wouldn’t have noticed each other at all? Rather impossible, none of them could have ignored another genius around them. Would they have been competing against each other or would the two-year age gap and different backgrounds have separated them…? Would Jim have been able to become friends with anyone while being abused at home? Would Sherlock have deduced his experiences? And if he did, what would he have done about it? Reported it, ignored or – being a little sociopath he was back then – considered it _interesting_?

What if they met few years later in an elite secondary school when Jim surely used the name Patton? In high school? In the university…? As you’re getting older age gap which seemed to be too big when you were a child doesn’t matter anymore. So… what would he have done if he had met someone so _broken and amazing at the same time_ as a student? Would he have deduced Jim was genius murderer who had killed for the first time being ten years old and slaughtered his family as soon as he turned eighteen…?

He looked at the picture one more time. Actually he had no idea what would have happened but he was too rational to regret things he couldn’t change. The only thing that matter was the present and the only things he wanted was to learn what past had led to said present and to deduce what results it may have in the future. He wasn’t going to put up with the fact that Jim already knew everything about him and probably had thought about it all a long time ago. Still, he disappeared for three years and now came back to play _the second game_ with Sherlock and what was supposed to be _just a game_ turned to something a lot more personal.

Dark circles under Jim’s eyes, his pale face, bandage on the wrist and injured cheek.

Sherlock clenched his fists and new images filled his mind. People who hurt Jim… he wanted to find them and hurt them as well. He supposed that most of them were long dead just like Carl Powers and Patton's but Owen and Kevin were probably still alive. Why did Jim leave them? And did that monsters even know that their younger cousin was criminal emperor? If they did, how did Jim manage to force Owen to work for him…? And what happened to Kevin whose face still seemed so familiar?

Sherlock knew he could start investigating those two, especially since Bill had sent him a lot of information and contacts but he didn’t want to do that yet – he just didn’t trust himself in that case. He remembered what he had done to a man who dared to hit Mrs Hudson and how he killed Magnussen who threatened John and presumed that another murder wasn’t a good idea and that it would get Mycroft mad. And he was absolutely sure that he _would_ kill both Patton's if given a chance. He couldn’t change the past but he could make people who deserved it suffer. He wouldn’t regret killing them and…

He froze. Mrs Hudson. John. People he considered close and whom he wanted to protect at all cost even if it meant killing in cold blood. Would he kill for Jim as well? Without a doubt.

He looked at Kevin’s Patton photo one more time, trying to imagine how he looked now. Light brown, straight hair, dark eyes, common facial features; he didn’t look like Sherlock at all so if he was going to visit Rose as him, he had to change his appearance and, of course, get a false ID.

He decided to start from the former and since he didn’t take any outfits from Baker Street, he had to go shopping; he didn’t feel like leaving the hotel room but he had no choice and besides deep inside he knew he needed to clear his head and calm down. Going outside and doing simple tasks like buying clothes and looking for a hairdresser could help.

No more thinking. He had to bury the unwanted knowledge deep inside his mind palace. In some small room he rarely visited, so that he wouldn’t bump into it by an accident… So that it wouldn’t haunt him, bringing back the urge to find Pattons and _make them suffer_.

So that Jim, whom he was going to meet in few days, wouldn’t deduce he knew the truth about his past.

***

 

 


	15. Ireland – 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me lot of time to translate this chapter but it's a bit longer than the previous ones and... I really hope you'll like it:)

***

Since Sherlock didn’t manage to find a hairdresser or a wig shop anywhere nearby, three hours after leaving the hotel he was back in the room. A shopping bag full of cosmetics was laying on a cupboard while Sherlock was sitting in front of a mirror with bleach in his hair, trying on coloured contacts and wondering what he could do with his face to look more alike the guy from the photo. The last time he shaved was three days ago in Mycroft’s place and even though his facial hair didn’t need to be got rid of yet, with the help of a razor he managed to modify his facial features – he didn’t look like Kevin Patton from the photo at all but at least less like the _famous detective in a hat_. Previous plans assumed that he would _somehow_ get in the hospital, but after reading the nursing home regulations he was sure he had no chance to do so unnoticed. He analysed all the possibilities during the shopping and the conclusion was clear: the only option was changing his look, introducing himself as Kevin Patton and hoping that no-one would take seriously a mad old woman’s screams, if she stated that _the man who had come to her was not her grandson_. Still, pretending to be Jim’s cousin was one of the last things he wanted.

After appropriate time he washed and dried his hair, looked in the mirror critically and applied the hair dye one more time. Then, he went out on the balcony to smoke _again_ , not caring about the fact that at some point hotel guests may start complaining about the cigarette smoke. He heard the phone ringing but ignored it; he supposed it was Mycroft and since he had a favour to ask him he decided to call him back as soon as everything was ready. There was a risk his brother would refuse to help him, annoyed by the fact Sherlock didn’t pick up the phone immediately but he had some news he could exchange for the false documents and hoped everything would go smoothly.

He looked at the clock, irritated. The bleach still needed twenty minutes so he took his laptop, deciding that he had to do something constructive with the time. He read everything concerning Rose Patton again, memorizing the information which seemed to be important and it helped a bit to erase the recurring, unwanted thoughts. After washing his hair, he cut it a bit and straightened even though he knew its condition would be really bad when he came back to London and dyed it back to natural dark brown. Still, the result he achieved was impressive and he was sure most people wouldn’t recognise him. Having dressed up he left the hotel again and went to the photo booth he had seen two blocks away to make a passport photo.

When he called Mycroft it was already three p.m.; waiting for the connection, Sherlock was staring critically at the photos and almost sighed with a relief when his brother finally picked up the phone.

“Hello, brother dear. It took you a lot of time to call me back.”

“I’ve been busy and there’s something I need you…”

“Before you ask for anything, I want to know what you are doing in Dublin.”

“I’m not telling you before you promise to help me.”

“Don’t behave like a child” the man growled. “I’m not going to…”

“Before you start refusing, listen to me” Sherlock interrupted and with his free hand he started typing Mycroft’s e-mail address on the laptop keyboard. “I’m sending you a photo… _my_ photo and I want you to use it to prepare false documents with the name…”

“What’s going on? I’m not taking part in your games with Moriarty and I’m quite sure…”

“…Kevin Patton” he finished and because Mycroft fell silent, the detective continued. “I’m sending you all the data and if you deliver me the documents by morning I will tell you who the man is and maybe even answer all your questions as long as…”

“I’ll deliver it tonight. Personally” Mycroft stated and his voice sounded seriously all of sudden. “Expect lots of questions.”

“To be honest I’ve expected more complaints about it...”

“We’ll talk when I’m in Dublin” he answered harshly. “Don’t do anything stupid until then. See you later, brother dear” he ended the conversation and the line went silent before Sherlock managed to say anything. He put the phone aside, a bit confused and he almost immediately came up with a few ideas why Mycroft reacted so weirdly hearing the name Patton. None of the theories sounded probable and he had too much other things to think about to waste the time on something he was going to learn in a few hours anyway.

Before evening he left the hotel for the third time to buy some clothes and after coming back he was sitting at the computer again. He started with reading the updated version of Bill’s database which now contained Barts workers as well; he had found two women who had been born in Brighton and was about Jim’s age but their second names didn’t match to any girl from the school – but Bill had already investigated them and learnt that they changed them after getting married. Besides them, Barts and Brighton lists didn’t contain the same people which irritated Sherlock a bit but not so much to care about it.

He spent more than three hours talking to Bill on Skype, listened to his complaints about how bad he looked in blond hair and told him what he was going to do in Ireland. His friend was surprised that Sherlock’s only detailed plan was visiting Rose in the nursing home, that he still didn’t know what exactly he was going to do in Clane and that he gave up getting in touch with the journalist, Alice Flynn.

“I’m going to visit the cemetery” he stated when they run out of things to talk about.

“Why? Do you really want to see this fucked up family graves?”

“No, I want to find out what Jim’s brothers’ names were.”

“For what? I mean… yeah, you’re right. They might have had a different last name than Patton or Hawkins and Moriarty might have used it somehow and if we run across somebody with the same names we’ll be sure that’s a fake personality he had invented.”

“Exactly. I didn’t come up with any other idea how to find it out since Jim might have changed their birth certificates and besides I really don’t feel like looking through files in a municipal administration.”

“But you feel like wandering around the cemetery hoping he didn’t change their names on the grave?”

“He’s got too much respect to these children to do so. And, to be honest, I like cemeteries better than offices.”

“Sherlock… do you even realise you stopped calling him Moriarty…?” Bill suddenly asked and a shadow of something similar to concern showed on his face.

“I do and no, I do not sleep with him” he answered which made Bill astounded. “Mycroft. Irene. Don’t even ask.”

“I’m not going to…” he murmured and cleared his throat. “All right. So… Let’s… Listen, when you find any suspicious names just send it to me and I’ll add them to the database.”

“Until now it hasn’t actually helped us...”

“It hasn’t ‘cause we’re dealing with the criminal _network_ and we won’t know if someone is a part of it before we’ll find the person who connects them to the rest of it.” Bill said. “I know it seems boring but it _did_ helped us to find out that Molly’s boyfriend is Mrs Butler’s son who works for Moriarty. Besides… just think about it: a few years ago you didn’t suppose that his family is important ‘cause if you did you’d get to Clane back then. And when it comes to his network that’s exactly the same: a few years ago you didn’t even try to look for people who were close to him when he was a child. When you were destroying his criminal empire, you made a mistake. You assumed that you had to look for criminals, impostors and people who love money too much but you didn’t think about _ordinary people_ like Corey Butler. You didn’t know if he had ever been close to anyone, that he had started building his empire as a child and that his family was so important to him since on the one hand it’s the reason he’s so fucked up and on the other – his pressure point. Now you know why, don’t you…?”

“Because a few years ago I didn’t have any emotional attachments, my family has never been important to me and I assumed he was just the same” he said, embarrassed that someone like Bill… intelligent for sure but not _genius_ , pointed out a flaw in his logic from a few years ago. “You’re totally right. Back then I could have made it if only I had looked at him differently.”

“But a lot has changed since then, especially lately” Bill said and Sherlock nodded hesitantly.

“A lot” he muttered and looked away. _Mycroft_. “Go on with the investigation and… just go on. I’ll get in touch with you after visiting Rose Patton. Unless my brother sabotages my plans I’ll go to the nursing home tomorrow.”

“Sunday, a visiting day, less stuff, more mess. Easier to get out unseen if something goes wrong.”

“Something like that” he answered even though he didn’t think about it before – he had never visited anyone in a nursing home and the only time he had ever been in a place like that was a case seven years ago, when he broke into the building in the middle of the night to catch a fake patient robbing bathers. He got distracted thinking about that investigation; back then he didn’t know John yet and his drug issues got so serious that only few weeks later Mycroft made him go to rehab after which he started working with Lestrade. He smiled weakly remembering those times: he lived day by day, cared for no-one and nothing except of cases and drugs, made Mycroft and police officers he met mad and… his life had no purpose at all. He didn’t have money, lived in dumps compared to which Baker Street was a palace and was on a downward spiral, risking his life stupidly since back then it mattered nothing for him.

He had no idea how he managed to survive and he didn’t want to think about it. He shook it off and looked at Bill, clearly worried about him and asking if he was alright.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ve asked you if you had been in touch with Moriarty since last time we had spoken.”

“He texted me few times and advised to visit Trinity College when I’d be sightseeing.”

“How he…” Bill paused and in the end let it go. “Didn’t he figure out what you are looking for in Ireland?”

“If he did he wouldn’t text me information about tourist attractions.”

“I guess you’re right” Bill said and they both fell silent for a minute which was a bit embarrassing during a Skype video-conversation. “Should I ask what it’s all about?”

“Haven’t you deduced it already?”

“Most of it” Bill answered and laughed nervously. “I’m not going to condemn you so don’t look at me as if you’re waiting for a reproach. Besides… I suppose that… since now _you call him Jim_ … he won’t kidnap me again. And I’m sure it’s better to have him as a friend than an enemy so… If you expected to hear words of righteous indignation in Mycroft style from me you’d be disappointed.”

“Good to know” he said with a smirk, amused by Bill’s nervousness.

“And, to make things clear, I’ve known you’re not into women since we met so don’t wait for something like _Sherlock! Why didn’t you tell me you’re gay?!_ ” he added modulating his voice in such a funny way that the detective couldn’t resist from laughing loudly.

“I honestly didn’t expect anything like that” he answered and considered the subject closed. “Listen, I’ll send you the files I’ve found in Barts. Maybe you’ll be able to connect it to something.”

“Corey’s CV and family photo?”

“Yes. Look for information about that IT guy, Travis, just in case… and try to find out what happened to Owen Patton after he quit Barts. I’ll send you everything I got.”

“I could start listening Corey’s recordings if you send them to me as well.”

“I copied them into my laptop but it would take ages to send it. If you’ve got time, go to Baker Street and take my flash drive. Living room, top drawer in the dresser. I didn’t change the password. I’ll call Mrs Hudson to inform her you’re going to come to my place; she has the keys to my apartment so she’ll let you in. No need to rush, Owen Patton is much more important.”

“You don’t want to investigate him yourself, do you?” Bill asked but Sherlock only tightened his lips. “All right. I’ll do what I can, even though I suppose you’d do better going back to Barts and talking to the hospital staff. He had been working there for two years so someone…”

“Don’t even start and just take care of it” he said, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Bill opened his mouth and closed it back, realising there was no point in arguing about it; then he changed the topic, commented Sherlock’s hair one more time and few minutes later he ended the conversation, promising to go on with the investigation.

***

Mycroft appeared in Sherlock’s hotel room at nine o’clock p.m., handed him two unsigned folders and sat down on the only armchair with a grave face. The detective didn’t dare to look through the files until he learned what it was all about; his brother wasn’t in a proper mood to annoy him by reading the papers wilfully and ignoring his appearance.

“How did you find out about Kevin Patton?” Mycroft started when Sherlock sat on the desk and looked down at him.

“I’d rather ask how _you_ did” he answered slowly, staring at his brother’s cold face.

“How I… Sherlock, I’ve had him right under my nose for ages and I had no idea he was using a false identity! Only yesterday results of the genetic test came and…” he paused and snorted with irritation. “Even you couldn’t have deduced it and the only possible option is that Moriarty himself told you who his MI6 spy had been!”

“I’ve got no idea what you are talking about” Sherlock said, confused. “I haven’t been interested in that guy anymore and Ji… and Jim Moriarty has never told me a word about him” he finished lamely, perfectly sure that Mycroft noticed he was going to call the criminal by his first name only. He had to be more careful, definitely.

“If you weren’t interested in him anymore and didn’t learn the truth from Moriarty, how do you know that Kevin’s Patton was the real name of the spy whom MI6 knew as Kyle Allen?”

“You must be kidding…” the detective coughed up. “I… I’ve got no idea it was Patton…”

“So where did you hear that name?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me how did you discover that’s the same person” he said, not taking his eyes off Mycroft’s pale face. “I promise.”

“When Allen died in a jail after drinking poisoned ink, we started investigating his past more carefully than when he was hired by secret service twelve years ago. He was good so he got promoted quickly. There wasn’t anything special or suspicious about him.”

“But?”

“We knew that Kyle Allen was reported missing in WTC attack but his files twelve years ago were clear: ex-soldier, secret missions which all went perfectly well and amazing recommendation. There was absolutely nothing which looked… _wrong_. He didn’t have any close family but now we’ve discovered that when he came back to England he didn’t get in touch with _any_ relatives or friends. We left him in missing people list on purpose but he was allowed to inform his close ones he was alive.”

“Get to the point. You’ve done genetic test. And?”

“Yes, we have” he said and looked away, clearly ashamed. “When he was hired he was tested as well but we only compared the results to European database. I don’t want to get into politics and the only important thing you need to know is the fact that now I’ve got better connections than then and since I’ve personally taken care of MI6 spy’s case I could do a bit more than secret service did twelve years ago. Anthea’s idea, not mine and…”

“Just tell me, I really don’t need all these details.”

“His DNA matched Kevin Patton, a man who was listed as missing after WTC as well but he wasn’t ex-soldier like Kyle Allen but a criminal accused of rapes and one sexually motivated murder, wanted in a few States. He had charges brought up against him but it never came to trial since he escaped to New York and disappeared a few months before WTC attack.”

“He… he must have stolen Kyle Allen’s identity during all the fuss connected to the attack…”

“We can’t be sure but given the circumstances… he could have killed Allen and waited for the opportunity to take over his identity and the terrorism attack was a chance to do so. The important part is the fact that when the whole MI6 were investigating Kevin’s Patton past from before stealing Kyle Allen’s identity… you called me and asked for fake documents with the name that has been keeping Great Britain secret service busy for the last 24 hours. I’ve told you everything. Your turn. _How did you find out about Kevin Patton_ and for god’s sake! Why do you want to pose as him?”

“Have you got it, the documents for me?”

“I have but you won’t get it until you explain it.”

“Can I take a look?” he asked, pointing to the folders. Mycroft narrowed his eyes angrily but a few seconds later he nodded. Then, Sherlock opened the first folder – the thinner one – in which he found a false passport and driving license which were made so perfectly that no-one would suspect they weren’t authentic – no wonder, since they were prepared by services which could make _any_ document _legal_. The second one contained MI6 agent Kevin Patton / Kyle Allen files and was much more interesting; the first thing he saw was Patton’s photo – he didn’t look like Sherlock in his new image at all but their hairstyle and facial hair were surprisingly alike. Then… files from the cases he took part in, result of the genetic test, photos from the jail and autopsy.

He couldn’t stop staring at the dead man face: he was dying frightened, knowing perfectly well he was drinking poison and doing so even though he didn’t want to die.

“Did anyone visit him the morning he died?” he asked, closed the folder and put it aside.

“He was given a breakfast.”

“Is that everything you know? Haven’t you established who prepared and brought him the meal, have you?”

“We only know it wasn’t the person who was obligated to deliver him food since the person who _was_ , came to his jail a few minutes later and saw him dead.”

“Security footage?”

“Messed up. Someone broke into the security system and fifteen minutes before Patton died the security monitors started showing forged recordings. The moment Patton was given poisoned ink wasn’t recorded at all.”

“So everyone who was in the building back then is suspected.”

“Fortunately I wasn’t” Mycroft said dryly. “Get to the point, Sherlock.”

“To make things clear, I really had no idea that Kevin Patton was the spy you were looking for. Moriarty hasn’t mentioned the name Patton, or Allen by the way, even once and I haven’t asked him about it since I suppose you’d tell me everything. If he…”

“Sherlock, if the next thing you say isn’t the truth about Patton, I swear to god, my people will come in and drag you back to London.”

“Fine” Sherlock growled. “Kevin Patton was Moriarty’s cousin and I needed his ID to visit their crazy grandma in a nursing home. I hope that’s enough since I’m not going to tell you anything more.”

“How… Did he…” he started completely shocked by the news and stared at Sherlock for a few seconds as if he saw a ghost. “When did you find it out?” he finally asked.

“Only recently but I can’t tell you more about it since it’s _my case_ and it’s not connected to yours at all. I can help you to make up a story you’d be able to give to MI6 but… that’s it.”

“Are you aware of the fact that now I know where to look for information concerning Patton and besides his kinship with Moriarty…”

“You’re going to investigate him in Ireland, aren’t you?” he mocked, bending over Mycroft. “Do you know what will happen if you do it? Moriarty will notice it for sure. He’ll get mad and you know perfectly well that his madness tends to give pathologists and funeral homes lots of work. Because, you know? I’m careful and for now Moriarty has no idea what I’m doing and what I’ve already learnt. Besides, he’s got a soft spot for me and even if he realises what I’m doing, no-one will get hurt. He’ll get angry… he might get devastated that I’m digging into his past but he won’t kill me and maybe…” he paused, not sure if saying more is a good idea. “And maybe he’ll accept the fact I’ve beaten him and found his pressure points.”

“I’ve been led to believe that Moriarty won’t be happy if you find out what his weaknesses are.”

“He won’t be. No-one would” he stated calmly. “But… you don’t see it, do you? Our weaknesses are the part of ourselves and at some point of a relationship you don’t want to have secrets from the other part.”

“Only if the other part is _someone dear_ , not a rival with whom you occasionally flirt.”

“How do you know he isn’t _someone dear_ to me?” the detective asked and straightened up, narrowing his eyes. “How do you know I’m not dear to him?”

“Enough” Mycroft said angrily and stood up so that now he was looking down at Sherlock. “You don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m not even surprised since you’ve never been in a relationship, you’re innocent as a baby and you try to cure your broken heart after John got married and left you for good. You’ve convinced yourself that the relationship with Moriarty, who clearly fascinates you, may become important to both of you but  that’s not going to happen and whatever you think is between you, it doesn’t mean anything! He is still a dangerous criminal and now, when you got attached to him, he has got a perfect tool to destroy you!”

“Yes, he has, but he won’t do that” Sherlock said, looking straight into his brother’s furious face.

“How do you know? He’s an unpredictable, emotionless psychopath!”

“That’s the exact things people call _me_.”

“You’re not…” Mycroft started but his throat has gone dry and he fell silent for a moment. “For god’s sake… Why did you have to fall in love with the worst person in the whole world…?” he asked in so quiet and depressed voice that he didn’t sound like himself.

“Because I was lonely” he answered. “You know something about loneliness. You should understand.”

“I’ll never understand” Mycroft sighed and suddenly he seemed as tired as if all problems of the world rested on his shoulders. He placed his left hand on his temple which indicated a migraine attack while the right one clenched tightly. “Sherlock… you can visit that woman. I’ll cover it all up and no-one will know you’ve got anything to do with Patton’s case. You can keep on playing with Moriarty but… I beg you… don’t get yourself into something I won’t be able to get you _out of_. And promise me that if anything goes wrong you’ll get in touch with me right away and won’t try to act on your own.”

“You let me do it… just like that?”

“I know from experience that you always do what you want no matter what I say. And that if we’re in conflict there will be no chance you’ll ask me for help. Promise me you _will_ if you need it.”

“Do you mean Moriarty or everything?”

“For now _Moriarty_ is your _everything_ so if you’re going to keep it secret you should try to cover your feelings _better_ ” he said coolly; Sherlock winced and looked away, unable to stand his piercing gaze any longer.

“Am I that obvious?”

“For me – yes, but if it’s any consolation I doubt other people will notice it as fast as I did.”

“All right” he murmured in answer, deciding not to enlighten Mycroft. Irene, Mary and even Bill… “If Moriarty threatens me in any way I’ll tell you as soon as it happens. You can…” he paused but in the end he decided that confession like that might help Mycroft trust him. “You can track my phone if you decide I’m in danger. I’ll turn off the protection that has prevented you from doing so. Is it enough for you to believe I’ll be safe?”

“You could say that. And if Moriarty gives me the smallest reason to believe he is a threat I’ll catch him thanks to things you’ve told me and kill him in front of your eyes” he said coldly and warningly.

“I’ll warn him” Sherlock answered, his voice barely audible.

“I’m not joking. He’ll be captured, tortured to death and…”

“I know perfectly well you’re not joking and that’s why I’ll warn him” he repeated and because Mycroft still didn’t seem convinced he decided to say something more. “I agreed for your surveillance because you let me continue that relationship. I’m going to do everything I can to watch him and make him… more tolerable for the government since I know what you’ll do to him if I don’t try enough. It’s only a deal.”

“Only?”

“Contrary to what you believe I didn’t plan this, nor did I want to make you angry” he said uncertainly and finally dared to look into Mycroft’s pale eyes. He wasn’t mad, shocked nor worried – his face turned into emotionless mask covering both his feelings and the imminent migraine which he was going to suffer from for the next few hours.

“And…?” the man asked with cold and distant voice.

“If it had been you who died in the car which Moriarty blew up I would have missed you” he answered quietly. “Even though you probably still think I’d be more than happy to bury you and take all the money you’d leave me in your will.”

“Spare me these fake sentiments” Mycroft snorted mockingly but his eyes stayed alert and serious.

“Believe me, I’d feel much better if they were indeed fake” he confessed but his brother only smirked, clearly not believing what he was saying – which wasn’t surprising given their past history.

“Enough” he said and took a deep breath. “I’ve got some things to reconsider before talking to MI6 so I need to get going. Has anything changed or you’re flying back to London on Monday?”

“It hasn’t” he answered, not bothering to ask how Mycroft knew when he had booked a flight back. “I’ll let you know if my plan changes.”

“I’ll see you soon” he said and turned back to the door; Sherlock hesitated but after a second grabbed his wrist to stop him. Mycroft gave him such a weird look that he immediately regretted it.

“Thank you” he managed to say, looking down.

“I wish I could say _you’re welcome_ ” Mycroft answered; then he headed towards the door and quietly closed it behind him.

***

Sherlock was aware of the fact he had told Mycroft too much. He shouldn’t have shown him emotions, bidden on with him and suggested in any way he had sentiments for him – even though his brother didn’t believe him, it was a mistake which Sherlock made in the heat of the moment and now he knew that Mycroft might use it against him later. He used Mycroft’s sentiments against him so many times that he couldn’t expect the man wouldn’t do the same if he wanted to force Sherlock to do something. However, the worst thing was the fact that his brother had realised how important Jim had become to Sherlock – no matter if he thought it was an obsession or feelings – because _that_ sentiment he would surely use against them both when the time came and do so without much effort. Of course, he said that he wasn’t going to chase Moriarty, that he had given Sherlock full warrant to take care of him and wouldn’t interfere until the criminal got crazy again but… the _one step too much_ might be any criminal activity and besides Sherlock wasn’t sure if he was able to influence Jim and… stop him. Whatever that supposed to mean.

He promised to _warn him_ because the criminal needed to know what the consequences would be if he planned another spectacular show. Sherlock had no doubts that Mycroft could use their shared weaknesses to catch Jim… torture him and kill in the end. He didn’t even want to think about the possibility of being forced to see it.

He took the old mobile – his brother must have seen it but didn’t say a word about it – and dialled Jim’s number, not going to waste time on texting. Waiting for Jim to pick up, he removed a small bug which Mycroft attached under the armrest; the fact his brother decided to wiretap him irritated Sherlock but didn’t exactly surprise him. He took the bug to the bathroom and placed in on the humming heater, planning to destroy it later… but for now, Mycroft was going to listen to annoying sounds from the heating system.  Then, he closed the door and went to the balcony, taking the cigarettes with him.

Fifth ring. Sixth…

“Hello, Sherly, did you miss me?” he finally heard the well-known voice with heavy, Irish accent, which once had been the most irritating thing in the world but now evoked totally different emotions. He smiled and leaned on the railing, watching the urban exterior illuminated by lighthouses and car headlights.

“ _It’s not enough to say that I miss you_ ” he answered. “But that’s not the reason I called you. Can you…” he paused, hearing sounds of a conversation and woman laughing loudly on the other side of the line “…talk?”

“Wait a second” Jim said and the line went silent for a moment. “Ok. What’s up, my dear?” he asked, apparently having gone to different room, since Sherlock didn’t hear other people anymore, only music playing quietly in the background.

“Whatever I’ve heard I hope that’s not a criminal meeting which will result in drawing police attention.”

“No… no, it’s not” Jim answered, amused. “Definitely. Scotland. Long evenings spent by the fireplace, good whisky with ice and long, lonely walks. I’d like you to come here someday. Only you and I, wandering off mountains, cliffs where we can fall and be lost forever and no people who could annoy us with their stupidity in three-mile radius. Does it sound romantic enough?”

“If you didn’t mention the cliffs it _would_ ” he answered but decided that’s not a proper time for flirting. “I hope you’ve secured that phone so that no-one is able to wiretap us.”

“You insult me suggesting I haven’t” Jim snickered. “What’s the matter, Sherly? Do you feel like dirty talking but you’re afraid you brother might listen?”

“My brother has visited me and tried playing protective hen, again. He didn’t like the fact we’re in touch.”

“Oh, what a surprise” Jim laughed and his tone got ironical and even more accented. “Am I really that an undesirable match? Rich, genius, famous and with great imagination. Some might even say I’m quite handsome, not like you, obviously but I’m not ugly either. By the way, I wouldn’t say your brother was a good choice if you wanted to talk about your romantic problems. Well, well… It must be really bad between you and John if you…”

“It’s not about John and I didn’t confide in” Sherlock snorted. “Mycroft deduced it himself. And threatened to imprison you as soon as you start causing troubles.”

“I’ve heard it lots of times and I’m not really impressed” he said, pretending to yawn.

“Do not underestimate him. He said that if you weren’t _behaving_ he would use me to catch and kill you. I know him. He was deadly serious.” He said which seemed to work because Jim didn’t answer. “Somehow he… he gives us his blessing. Or something like that. But only if you’re a good boy who isn’t a threat for the government… or _me_. He will murder you if you do anything he doesn’t like.”

“No need to worry. I’m careful and won’t let him catch me” Jim said and even though he tried to sound amused, he was obviously tense.

“You were at my place and left _the items_ for our game just like that, you walk the streets of London as if you aren’t the most wanted criminal in the country. Do you really think that’s what you can call _being careful_?”

“It’s not like that’s the first time someone’s threatening to kill me. I’m not a fragile princess. I can take care of myself.”

“But _it is_ the first time someone’s threatening to kill you in front of my eyes” Sherlock said, not going to comment the last sentence which didn’t sound convincing taking into consideration Jim’s scars from last year.

“Did he say that? That killing me is something he’d do to teach you a lesson? How dramatic, almost _my style_. Maybe I’ll start to like him, well… I _would_ if he wasn’t cold as _ice_ and boring as _hell_ at the same time” he laughed at his own joke.  

“He’ll do whatever he thinks is proper and I won’t be able to stop him from hurting you and…” he paused and looked down at the street three floors below. No, the memories from Barts rooftop was the last thing he needed right now. “My heart will break and then I’ll die from boredom.”

“It was the lamest love confession I’ve ever heard” Jim stated, trying to sound unimpressed but failing.

“And the first one confessed _to you,_ I guess” Sherlock said, a bit irritated that the man didn’t want to take his words seriously.

“Ou!” Jim squeaked so loudly and unexpectedly that Sherlock almost dropped his phone. “Why so mean, Sherly…! People love me, how could you say they don’t? I’m shattered!” he cried with an exaggerated and obviously fake hurt.

“You’re not” Sherlock sighed. “You try to underestimate my brother’s threats and I really don’t want to see…”

“How my skull breaks after the shot in the head since then your little heart breaks as well, bang, BANG!” he hit something and continued his crazy rant with a higher voice. “Then you’d really miss me, miss me so much that if I believed that after death I’d be able to watch you, I’d get myself killed on my own free will just to see it. I’d haunt you eeeevery night and I’d talk to you in your dreams, I’d move things like a vicious poltergeist and scare your neighbours… knock, knock... knock on the window, knock on the door. I’m wondering how loudly the Iceman would scream if he saw the ghost of me in his bedroom in the middle of the night… I guess so loudly he’d wake the whole London and his ice-lover as well and hey! She’d be screaming as well and it’d be music to my ears.”

“You’re completely mad” Sherlock interrupted him but couldn’t resist from smiling when Jim mentioned _ice-lover_. Kudos to him if he was able to get to this information.

“You love me like that” Jim murmured in answer, changing his tone which only seconds ago sounded hysterical. “I’ll be good, I promise” he added calmly. “Thanks to you, _staying alive_ doesn’t seem boring anymore and I won’t risk losing it all for a moment of fun. And it would be funny indeed to watch your brother losing control and giving someone an order to shoot me.”

“I wouldn’t call it losing control if you didn’t make him kill you _himself_.”

“A heart of ice isn’t enough to torture and kill with bare hands; for that man needs a balls as well and that your brother lacks” he snorted with weird and unreasonable irritation but after a moment he calmed down and when he spoke again he sounded just like sweet, shy Richard Brook. “Really, I’ll be good. For now I don’t even take on clients. Your brother and the rest of England can rest easy.”

“It’s hard to believe” Sherlock said hesitantly; Jim’s mood swings didn’t go unnoticed by him and he started getting suspicious of why the man was behaving like that. “I know you and I know how easily you get bored.”

“I won’t ever get bored thinking about you, and I do it aaaall the tiiiiime” he hummed making Sherlock even more confused.

“You know, you don’t sound convincing at all saying it like that.”

“I do it all the time” he repeated more quietly, without his Irish lilt. “Better?”

“It’d be better if I could see and deduce you right now.”

“Deduce me…?” he sighed a bit flirtatiously. “And what else would you do if you were near me?”

“Something much more interesting and pleasurable than I’m doing now” Sherlock said and having heard his own words, he wasn’t even surprised that Jim started laughing loudly.

“You realise how _that_ sounded, don’t you?” he asked, still giggling.

“I didn’t mean…” he started but then the memory of what happened in Mycroft’s bathroom came back and he almost blushed. “I didn’t mean what you think I did.”

“We’ve got to do something with your innocence, Sherly. Sometimes it’s really cute but…”

“Oh, just stop it” he mumbled, amusing Jim but the man decided not to make more fun of him.

“I’d like to spend the whole night talking with you like that but, unfortunately… duty calls. Nothing your brother would be bothered by. Thank you for your warning. I will keep that in mind the next time someone asks me to blow up something… big.”

“Jim…”

“Good night, honey. Expect to see me on Tuesday” he said before hanging up; as soon as the line went silent, Sherlock mind burst in so many conclusions that he gasped, unable to bear all the new information.

He had been afraid that the first conversation with Jim after he realised how he felt about him would be weird and nervous and the man would realise that something had changed but it didn’t happen and actually it appeared more natural and normal than ever before. Jim pretended to be a psycho but for some reason was less irritating than before and… some things he said sounded like friendly jokes which both of them treated as a harmless play. All the crazy stuff he said made him sound even more human to Sherlock but… was it intentional? Or did he just see the criminal differently since he had _looked in the mirror_?

Still, there were things Jim probably didn’t want to reveal or rather: wanted to show something else, unaware how much Sherlock already knew about him. His father and stepmother lived in Scotland and it was obvious he visited them and planned to stay there for a few days. But… how much did _they_ know? They must have recognised him in newspapers and on the screens so they must have known, just like Janine, that their son was a wanted criminal, famous James Moriarty. They knew it but even so he came to them and their relationship was completely normal – after all, at the beginning of the phone call Sherlock heard laughter and sound of a get-together. It looked like Jim and his parents were really close, a lot more than Sherlock ever was to his family. The detective knew that being more domestic than him wasn’t hard but a few weeks ago the Napoleon of crime was the last person in the world whom he would  have expected to see in a chalet, sitting by the fireplace and drinking whisky with parents. It sounded impossible but in Jim’s case apparently nothing was.

Woman laughing. Sherlock heard it only for a moment but since _the second game_ he knew how to listen and that voice he would recognise everywhere: Janine. Family together again… he tried to imagine what they could talk about… what were parents talking about with a son who came back from the dead…? Or with one who returned after being reported missing – since Janine could have not told them what she had learnt from Magnussen… assuming it was him who had told her about Jim’s death and… Well. Everything he knew about the Hawkins siblings were guesses and deductions, except for the obvious fact they were so close they became pressure points to each other. He didn’t understand their relationship because Bill was right: his family was never important to him and even though lately his feelings towards Mycroft changed, he couldn’t really _feel_ the connection Jim and Janine had. John rarely talked about Harry, Molly was the only child, he had never seen Mrs Hudson’s sister… and he had to solve far too many fratricide cases to believe siblings could really love each other. _Just like Bill said_.

The more he analyzed Jim’s malice and insinuations, the more hidden meaning he saw: the jokes and mad rants might have been something totally different, might have been _the truth_. For now it was only an assumption, not the most probable one but he needed to think about it a bit longer. The other options were DID and other personality disorders such as borderline… and the possibility Jim _was_ only joking after all.

So… Jim invited him to a place his parents lived, his _bastion of normality_ , which could mean many things: the criminal decided to reveal his past, show him he was able to make close relationships or even that he wanted Sherlock to meet his family - he had learnt all of it from soap operas which he had watched with John. It sounded really stupid and to Jim it must have sounded just the same but ordinary people probably thought otherwise and that was how Jim tried to _play normality_ with him. Well, that one sounded even more weird and stupid but for now he just couldn’t rule it out.

The second thing – Jim asking ironically _if he wasn’t good enough for him_. Sherlock not only didn’t answer but also ignored the question. The irony might have been actually a desperate attempt to make Sherlock deny or confirm: _Am I really that an undesirable match…? Some might say I’m quite handsome, not like you, obviously but I’m not ugly either_. And then, the moment when Sherlock suggested Jim had heard love confession for the first time in his life which he tried to laugh off and which preceded mad gibberish; he might have behaved like that to hide his true feelings – Sherlock sometimes did the same thing. He didn’t get so hysterical and, being introvert, he’d rather turn into listless cyborg with blank face who didn’t care if his deductions hurt someone’s feelings or not. His speech at John’s wedding… he shuddered. No, that really wasn’t the time to bring back such memories.

And finally, the fact that in the end Jim calmed down and repeated he wouldn’t cause troubles at least thrice. When the detective stated he didn’t like the way he spoke, he immediately repeated the sentence differently. He had been changing his masks as if he was looking for the one Sherlock liked… and nervousness when he realised the detective wasn’t impressed by any of them.

And that was the truth – even though he was fascinated by Jim’s different personas and all of them were somehow attractive, the thing he wanted was to discover what Jim’s real face was. When he realised it he stopped lying to himself: he didn’t come to Ireland to satisfy his curiosity but to know him better. _That’s what new lovers do, honey_...

He wanted to know in whom he had really fallen in love and to achieve that goal he needed to get rid of all Jim’s masks, which the man had started building in the past. He needed to verify his new theories and there was only one way to do so. He clenched his fingers on the silent phone – since they talked only a few minutes ago he couldn’t expect Jim texting him before tomorrow. He glimpsed at the dark screen and closed his eyes, memorising their conversation; when he opened them back, he didn’t even realise when he started writing the message.

_You’re the best thing I’ve ever had and the fact my brother detests you is additional advantage, not a problem. I’ve never heard a love confession, nor have I confessed love to anyone, that’s why I’ve got no idea how to behave and what to do with all of this but I hope I will when we meet. I’ve got hundreds questions I’d like to ask you and the number of them increases every time we talk._

_Honey, please, warn me before you text me something like that when you know I’m not alone. Everybody thinks I’ve lost my mind._ The answer made him smile broadly and he immediately answered back.

_I’m warning now: I miss and want to see you._

_I own neither a time machine nor a teleporter and I’ve never regretted not having them like I do now._

_Start spending your fortune on engineers._

_I’ll think about it. XXX_

***

 


	16. Ireland - 3

***

On a Sunday morning Sherlock left the hotel, rented an inconspicuous Octavia as Kevin Patton and, using GPS, went to the countryside were Rose’s nursing home was located. He felt a bit weird every time he glimpsed at the car’s mirror but it meant his disguise was convincing; it also meant that the first thing he was going to do after coming back to London on Monday night was dying his hair back to its natural colour – he didn’t want to look like this even an hour longer that it was necessary.

Two hours later he reached the destination but waited in the parking lot until first visitors appeared, deciding it would be easier to blend in. Finally, he followed a married couple with three school age children who made so much noise that they were drawing all the attention to themselves. He stayed a few feet behind them and the strategy appeared to be a good choice: the receptionist was so tired by dealing with the screaming, naughty children, that she didn’t pay much attention to Sherlock’s face. She typed something on the computer, gave him a guest key card and told him shortly where he needed to go.

“The notes from the medical stuff states that Mrs Patton’s condition worsened a few days ago and that visitors should speak to her doctor before meeting her. Unfortunately, Mr O’Neill is not present today but if you wish to talk to a doctor I’ll ask for someone who covers him.”

“It seems unnecessary. I called few days ago and already spoke with a doctor, so today I only wanted to have a moment with my grandma” he said, smiling warmly and pointing to a small bouquet he had bought on his way here. “I hope bringing flowers isn’t forbidden…?”

“Of course it isn’t” the woman answered and her face immediately got more friendly. “As I said… The nurse office is down the hallway. Someone will take you to Mrs Patton's room.”

“Thank you very much” he said and headed towards the room she pointed to. Of course, thanks to the files from Bill, he already knew which room Rose Patton stayed in but he also knew the nursing home regulations stated that the visitors of _difficult patients_ couldn’t meet them without the presence of someone from the medical staff. He may try to dodge that regulation but he would be in trouble if caught. Besides, he supposed that Jim had a trusted employee in this place, hired to watch his grandmother and inform him if someone suspicious tried to visit the old lady. Kevin Patton was entitled to meet her so Sherlock supposed that before Jim learnt about the visit, he would be already far away from here – of course, only if everything went smoothly and without any problems. In the end Jim would hear everything about his doings and the journey to Brighton and Ireland but for now… he needed to keep him unaware of it. _The second game_ … actually it was still on.

He walked into the nurse office so confidently, that no-one from the stuff suspected anything was wrong. When he stated he came to visit Rose Patton, a young nurse sitting in the corner whose face was hidden in the shadow raised her head, peeked at him and frowned. She expected Jim, that was clear, and that’s why he was relieved when another woman stood up – a bit elder blonde with a kind face. She was smiling friendly but checked his documents carefully, even though it had already been done at the reception.

“Usually Mrs Patton is visited by someone else” she apologised, giving him the passport and driving license back. “Your cousin made it very clear that Rose Patton must be specially protected from unknown guests, so forgive me if I'm a little wary.”

“I don’t blame you. You’re just doing your job” he said agreeably; maybe a bit _too_ agreeably, because the nurse, still smiling kindly, started watching him more closely.

“Please come with me” she said nonetheless and motioned to him to follow her.

However Sherlock had a vague plan, now he realised that visiting Rose unnoticed may be harder than he had thought. Jim must have secured against unwanted visitors and when it came to Kevin; he probably hadn’t visited his grandmother for years and the staff might have been informed they should be on guard if he appeared. They couldn’t forbid him from seeing Rose – after all Patton was authorised to do so – but they could look at his hands. And they would surely be paid well for giving Jim any interesting information. Sherlock swore quietly, frantically wondering what he would do if Rose started yelling he wasn’t who he posed as – because now he knew that it wouldn’t be underestimated and treated as the old mad womans hysteria. Would the documents from Mycroft be enough…? Or would he have to improvise if things went bad?

“I’ll tell Mrs Patton you’ve came. Please wait here” the nurse said when they reached a bright corridor with four doors; one of them wasn’t closed properly and when Sherlock peeked inside he saw a spacious room with expensive, posh furniture, double door to a terrace and a lot of flowers. It didn’t look like an impersonal, grey room in a hospital or a nursing home at all but rather like a hotel apartment – which actually shouldn’t have surprised him, since he had read in the files from Bill how much Jim paid for his grandmothers stay. “Good morning, Rose” he heard the nurse saying so he took a step back, coming closer to her. “You’ve got a guest.”

“I didn’t expect anyone” Rose Patton answered in a hoarse, squeaky voice typical of elderly people which had a shrill voice in their youth but smoked their whole life and yelled a lot.

“It’s your grandson” the nurse with such a kind voice it didn’t sound natural.

“James hasn’t called” she answered with irritation.

“That’s Kevin Patton. Shall I let him in?” the woman asked but didn’t get any answer. “Rose? Would you like to meet him?”

“Of course, you moron. Let him in and get out” she hissed and a moment later Sherlock heard footsteps from the inside of the room. “Haven’t you heard me? Let him in and get out of here!!!”

“Mr Patton, it seems your grandmother isn’t…”

“Please, leave us alone. Everything’s fine” Sherlock said which made the nurse look at him weirdly and suspiciously.

“I’ll be around in case anything happens” she said quietly, opened the door before Sherlock and stepped back, inviting him in.

After passing through the doorway, Sherlock immediately closed the door, not wanting any witnesses in the moment Rose saw him and realised he is not her grandson. He looked at the slim, short and fragile looking women who stood by the window with her back turned to him and cleared his throat but it didn’t cause any reaction. He took two steps toward the woman, keeping a close eye on her. She was dressed in a nightgown and a cream-coloured terry robe, her gray shoulder-length hair in which few dark strands were visible was tied in a bun and bony hands laid on the windowsill but it didn’t look like she was leaning on it. She was slouching her shoulders but she seemed to be in quite good physical condition for a eighty-year old.

“Get away from the door” she finally spoke. “That little bitch is surely eavesdropping. For a start, you’ve got exactly ten seconds to explain what you’re doing here or I make a scene so spectacular that everyone in here would remember it forever.”

“I’m not Kevin Patton” he confessed as soon as he moved away from the door.

“I KNOW!” the woman screamed, turning around and looking at him piercingly; her dark eyes were just like Jim’s: the same colour and shape, with deep shadows and a lot of wrinkles around them – Jim was about fifty years younger than her so he had much less wrinkles but still, hers were similar to his. The same mad sparkle in the pupils, hard-angled eyebrows and downturned eyelids. Her lips were thin with red lipstick on them, while her cheeks – sunken and marked by dark, unhealthy looking pigmentation which was sticking out since her complexion was really pale. “Of course you’re not Kevin. Kevin’s body has been lying in London’s morgue for few days and from the moment I was informed about his death I supposed someone posing as him might come here. However, I didn’t actually expected _you_ … nor the fact that it’d take so little time for the government to find me. On the other hand, you… well. If the rumours are true, _the consulting detective_ is probably the only person whom I _should have_ expected. Congratulate your brother that he managed to convince his _friends_ to hire you.”

“It’s not the government who sent me here” he said which made the woman laugh.

“Please sit down, Mr Holmes.” She pointed him an armchair and sat on a sofa, at least eight feet away from him. “If not the government then who? Secret service? Your brother himself? The police?”

“That’s my own investigation” he stated but she only smirked, clearly not believing him.

“You won’t learn anything about Kevin from me. He was a spy. He isn’t anymore. You’ve found out who he really was - good for you! Such a shame you did so when he was already dead. The only thing I can say is that James will be impressed when he finds out you’ve come here so soon after Kevin’s death.”

“I’m not here because of…” he started but Rose interrupted as if she didn’t hear him… and it turned out she _really_ didn’t.

“I’ve told Sinead not to bring her so-called friends to our house!” she said angrily, staring at Sherlock but not really _seeing_ him. Her eyes became blank but at the same time she started getting flushed. “We’re going to pay for it all, Lorcan! It’s a disaster she’s got pregnant but I’m sure she’ll completely waste her life if we don’t talk some sense into her! You always let her do all she wanted and that’s the result: she invites all those lowlifes to our house and gets laid with a different guy _every single night_! Talk to her and force her to marry that poor loser, Hawkins. When she moves out with him she won’t be our problem anymore. Are you listening? Don’t pretend you don’t hear me! I’m afraid of her, don’t you see? I’m afraid that she…” Suddenly Rose fell silent, her eyes changed and she looked at Sherlock as if nothing happened and it was obvious she wasn’t aware of the attack she just had.

“Please sit down, Mr Holmes” she said one more time, pointing an armchair on which Sherlock already sat. “I’ll ask my daughter to make some tea. Sugar?”

“Yes, please” he managed to whisper.

“Honey, bring a sugar, please” Rose said calmly, glancing at the door and sighed heavily. “So, what brings you here, Mr Holmes? Sinead has got into troubles in school _again_ , hasn’t she?”

“No, quite the opposite” he spoke the first words that came to his mind. Whatever he expected… he didn’t think of the possibility that Rose Patton could have _that_ sudden attacks of retrospection from the past even once. Bill warned him that she had those but he didn’t take it as seriously as he should have. “Everything is alright with Sinead. I’m here to talk about James” he said, staring at Rose’s dazed, unreadable face.

“James doesn’t go to the high school in Clane” she answered, fortunately letting him lead her to different times, when her grandson, not daughter, was in school. “And I’ve got nothing to say about him. I don’t care he’d get a scholarship if he accepted your offer. He doesn’t have time for that. And besides, why are you even talking to me? I rarely see him and I’m not his legal guardian. Why do you think I am? And how did you find me…?”

“James… gave me your address” he said, even more confused, when he saw the woman made a gesture as if she was taking something from a nonexistent drawer. Then she started making moves of brushing loose, long hair, even though she had hers already tied.

“But it’s not possible” she said, suddenly sounding amused. “I’ve sold that car” she added in a calm and careless voice which, in combination with her mental illness attack, made Sherlock shiver.

“Mrs Patton, I wanted to talk about James” he repeated, trying to sound confident but in fact he barely articulated the words.

“I’ve sold that car” she said again, emotionlessly. “And he moved out and rarely comes to visit me… it’s hard to come here without a good car. My poor, little baby. My poor James…” She sighed and started nervously biting her lips, smearing the red lipstick. A moment later she started speaking again, and her face got even more blank than before. “It’s so sad when you’ve got to run away, on and on, run away all your life… he’s running away from my daughter, that evil, murderous bitch and when he was a child he was running away from all those children who hated him so much, all the time, hated him, hated, hated, hated… Kevin hated him more, a lot more, but I was already far away from here and cried every night since I knew it was all my fault…! My fault, my fault, my fault… I saw it all and it hurt so much, when we were standing on the bridge and staring at the water, water, water… and he was telling me how a corpse pulled out of a river a week after death looks like and I was asking him if he would save me when I jumped off the bridge. That’s my fault, my fault…!”

“What’s your fault…?” Sherlock whispered, leaning towards Rose when she fell silent.

“That I was so weak my whole life” she said quietly and looked up at him. For a moment she seemed to regain her consciousness but it changed when she spoke again. “I should have done it years ago, years, years, years ago. I had a poison prepared for so long, I had money and time to plan it all but I waited, waited, waited, too weak to do anything, to get rid of that filthy bitch, Sinead, how could I born such a monster…? So much suffering…! and I could have protected him from it if only I was brave enough but the only thing I managed to do was to watch how he took care of it himself. He wasn’t weak, he did it all by himself, he wasn’t weak, wasn’t weak at all…”

“He killed Sinead” Sherlock interrupted and Rose, not answering him, started rocking on her seat and staring at the window. “Her brothers and your ex-husband. And you knew it all from the very beginning, didn’t you?”

“Lorcan, don’t joke like that! She’s so cute, our little baby, our princess” she laughed, staring at Sherlock with something resembling a flirt.

“He killed his mother and half of your family and you _knew it_.”

“Yes, you’re right” she giggled and froze for a moment. “Yes, he did. I bought him a flat in the city. I took care of everything I could. That was the only way I could help him before I flew away from him… flew away from them all…” She smiled dreamingly and opened her arms. “And he gave me all of this, that golden palace where I can fly as high as I want to and there’s always someone who watches me and keeps me safe, no-one screams, no-one screams at me anymore… He gave me all of this before I started falling down so that I can still fly… Bad for him he sometimes tries to…” she paused and looked down at her hands, which were back on the table. “People shouldn’t fly but he… he still can come back to earth. There’s no hope for me anymore, sometimes I fly too far away and I know one day I won’t be able to come back but he can… come back, come back, come back…” Her voice cracked and from that moment she was lilting weirdly, rocking on her seat again. “I wish someone brings him back. Calls him, for he still hear your voices, but I’m afraid, I’m so afraid, he’ll soon stop hearing you all, I’m so afraid ‘cause some birds only come back to earth when they’re shot. My heart will break if he dies before me and he often… often…” she stopped and unexpectedly hit the table with both her hands. “He annoys people on the ground and draws the gunshots like a magnet, as if he wants to come back to earth even if it means being killed. I fear the day I’ll be told he won’t visit me ever again. If it comes I’ll fall apart and will be laying here in a million little pieces. If he doesn’t fly back he’ll soon become like me, we all do if we run away from the normality for too long, when we…” She fell silent and didn’t speak for a minute or two. Finally she straightened up and rubbed her eyes, looking as if she was trying to fight the sleepiness. When she put her hands down, her forehead covered in a sweat, she was pale as a ghost and she looked exhausted and baffled. However, it was clear she was coming back to herself and when she spoke again, she sounded more conscious and sane. “James is the only one of my children and grandchildren I’m proud of and I don’t want to see him going crazy like I did. And that’s why you came here: because you don’t want it too.”

“Do you remember anything you’ve said few minutes ago…?” he asked with caution.

“Not much. A few random words… mostly the emotions and memories my brain has summoned. I’d rather not remember it at all” she said and looked at the window strangely; Sherlock got the impression she didn’t see the cold January day but some view from years ago. “That’s terrifying. You know something about it, don’t you? You think: _and what if I’d become like her someday? I was always different, people call me a freak, so maybe I’m already becoming like that?_ Do not worry, we, the true madmen, never know when we start going crazy. Paradoxically, sometimes the paranoid fear for our mental health is the proof everything is alright with it.”

“How often…”

“Too often” she snapped before he finished the question and rubbed her temples, wincing in pain. “Tell me, Mr Holmes… Just confirm or deny it, for I want to know it for sure… You didn’t look for me because of Kevin. He isn’t important to you at all and you didn’t even investigate him. You’ve found me looking for Jim’s past and it was a coincidence you’ve learnt about Kevin too.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“Actually no, you’re not. You’re just not the only one with deduction skills. By the way, congratulations” she said with a smile. “As far as I know, James did a lot to hide me. Well, everything he could when I insisted I don’t want to be sent abroad. I’ve been living here for years, and he visited me in a disguise, like you do now, as often as he could…” she paused and after a moment she squealed loudly and grabbed her head. “I’ve lost them…! I really don’t know where the earrings… key ring… earrings… key ring… that one with colourful ornament... You’re the only one… who can help me find… the key…”

“Mrs Patton…”

“Oh my God…”she whispered and tightened the fingers on her head. “Do not listen to me. Go away. Call the nurse and go away. Don’t tell anyone you’ve been here. James would go mad if he knew. I know you’ve visited me to understand something, not to use it against him but he won’t see it like that. I’m his weakness and he won’t believe you have good intentions… invitation… invitation to that old motel on Birch Avenue, do you remember the room on the last floor we rented last year, Lorcan? I’d like to go on holiday again, we haven’t been anywhere since…”

Sherlock didn’t hear the rest of the speech. Even though they weren’t talking for more than fifteen minutes, he couldn’t bare more of Rose’s retrospection attacks, all the rants containing pieces of the past, the crazy fantasies about flying and… the moments she regained consciousness between the flashbacks only made it all harder, because it made him realise how a woman who had been so important for Jim when he was younger changed when she got ill and lost her sanity. Leaving the room he bumped into a table where he had left the bouquet and a moment later he was back at the corridor, heading towards the nurse office.

He was perfectly sure that if he stayed with Rose an hour or two he would be able to draw any information he wanted out of her but he just _couldn’t_ do that and he regretted coming here at all. What did he expect? That he would have a friendly talk with a funny, a bit crazy old lady, who would carelessly share old stories with him? That he would be better than the psychiatrists and neurologists who had been treating her for years and still couldn’t help her? That he would do it all emotionlessly and it wouldn’t affect him at all…? He shouldn’t have come here, he shouldn’t have believed he would be able to use the acting skills he often used against people during investigations against _her._ He was disgusted with himself that he had even thought about fooling an old, ailing woman who was losing touch with reality every few minutes.

He had heard too much and he felt as if his head was going to explode because of the most important thing he saw: when Rose was coming back to reality she was perfectly aware how bad the condition was and that Jim may end up just like she did. She knew about the crimes he had committed and not only didn’t condemn them but approved what he had done. She believed her family was _tainted_ , she hated her own daughter and put all her hopes in Jim. She didn’t even mention her sons and other grandsons even though Bill… Bill. They were talking on the phone when she had an attack but Bill didn’t think it was scary and he behaved as if it amused him a bit. They got along and he was able to summarise everything he had heard from her without any problems, he even called her _lovely_ …!

“Mr Patton!” Sherlock heard the nurse who took him to Rose calling him. “Is everything alright?”

“Please check on my grandmother. I’m afraid… she doesn’t feel well” he answered, avoiding her look.

“Wait here” she said shortly and rushed to Rose’s room; Sherlock considered staying and talking to the nurse but he quickly decided it wasn’t good idea. Rose could tell her who really visited her and at the moment he didn’t feel like acting anymore. Besides, the younger nurse, who looked at him weirdly when he came to the office might have already established his personality… he bit his lips and without a second thought turned around, remembering the nursing home plans and taking different direction. He passed through the wing with patient rooms and after a few minutes he was back at the reception. The woman at the front desk was busy with another group of visitors which relieved him because thanks to that he could give her the guest key card back without talking to her.

“You’ve got to sign…” She didn’t manage to finish and Sherlock was already signing the papers; a minute later he was back in the parking lot, where he immediately got in the car, started the engine and left the grounds of the nursing home as fast as if the devil himself was chasing him.

He was driving the same route he had arrived in a daze and when he was few miles away he stopped by a small restaurant, leaned on the driving wheel and tried to analyse everything that happened.

First of all, he considered visiting Rose a mistake. The meeting turned out differently than he had thought it would and he heard things he didn’t really want to know. He risked being discovered by one of the nurses and now he was sitting in the car depressed and emotionally drained.

Now he knew how twisted Jim’s relatives on his mother’s side were and he realised it would have been a miracle if he grew up sane. A mother who killed three people in front of him and her brother with whom, according to Alice Flynn, she had an incestuous relationship with; Sherlock didn’t know much about Jim’s other uncle but he was a father of two monsters molesting their underage cousin so there must have been something wrong with him as well. A mentally ill grandmother living in a nursing home who had planned killing her only daughter half of her life and when her grandson did it himself she was proud of him. A grandfather too blind to see what was happening in his own house. And finally – Jim himself, who was forced to come back to Clane after a few years with his beloved father; he didn’t have anyone close in Lorcan’s home and started looking for understanding in his crazy grandmother, who was already divorced and living somewhere else. He visited her as often as he could and fed off her hate, psychosis and desire for revenge. Yes, now Rose felt remorse and regretted a lot of things but she didn’t understand it was also her fear, rage and auto destructive behaviour that made Jim who he was. Her patient card didn’t say a word about it but Sherlock supposed that in the past Rose, just like Sinead, had a serious problem with substance abuse, which might be the additional – besides senile dementia, schizophrenia and traumatic experiences - cause of her flashbacks.

Sherlock had to talk to Bill and however it was early and his friend could have been still sleeping, he dialled his number. The man answered quickly and after short greetings Sherlock got to the point and told him he had just left the nursing home.

“How could you call that woman lovely?” he asked with reproach after summarising the meeting shortly.

“In comparison to my junkie aunt, I assure you, she _was_ lovely” he said indifferently. “That nut was a pain in the ass. When she had a bad day which meant almost every day, she was talking about two things and nothing else: her prom and a herpes zoster she caught at a summer camp. Rose had a few sane moments and her brain surely wasn’t as damaged as my auntie’s.”

“She was horrifying…”

“Old people go crazy sometimes. Junkies go crazy in their old age really often. That’s the way it is.”

“What do you think she was taking?”

“A random assortment of antidepressants and psychotropic meds in large doses mixed with lots of alcohol and maybe some soft drugs too, that’s what I guess. She was lucky to live to a ripe old age. I would say a lot more if I saw her. Even though we’re both chemists and know something about drugs it seems to me I know a bit more than you.”

“I could have taken you with me” Sherlock said, not trying to argue about the last sentence.

“I guess so. But I would have denied for I’ve already told you…”

“That you don’t want to travel with me and dig up old bones, I know.”

“I would be useful though. You can investigate brutal murders and look at a rotting corpses without blinking but you couldn’t talk to a crazy old lady” he said accusingly. “Rose made you feel guilty, didn’t she? And she was a kind of a warning too. She must have been really smart when she was younger and then – boom! All the smartness and sanity as well went to hell only because she got ill. You feel sorry for the brains dying slowly like hers more than for the hearts stopped forever… that’s how Moriarty described killing that kiddo, Carl Powers, didn’t he? Her case got too personal for you and you know what? I’ve never thought anything like that would ever happen.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Haven’t you heard her? Whatever she was saying it was an extreme version of Moriarty’s rants…! You’re afraid he could become just like her and you can’t stand the fear of losing him like that.”

“He isn’t…”

“Oh, really? The only difference is the fact he is fifty years younger than her and as far as I know he isn’t addicted to any substances. Am I wrong?”

“No, you’re not” Sherlock said quietly, closed his eyes and started reciting all the deductions he had already made. “He doesn’t drink much coffee nor alcohol, he doesn’t smoke and he has never taken any drugs, maybe besides weed which he tried once but didn’t like. The only substance he takes regularly is zolpidem and he only takes it when he suffers from insomnia. He doesn’t like taking medicine, especially painkillers, he’s afraid of doctors and he gets prescriptions for sleeping pills from illegal sources even though he could get them from any doctor. He thinks no-one is able to take care of him better than himself no matter how sick or injured he is. However he doesn’t have proper medical knowledge he’d rather experiment on himself suffering from _damned pneumonia_ than go to a hospital…!”

“When did you deduce it all…?” Bill asked, clearly surprised.

“It was a progress, now I’ve only  summarised it” he said, tiredly rubbing his forehead. He didn’t suppose he would get a migraine as severe as Mycroft tended to have but he supposed he should start preventing them from happening if the stress caused unpleasant tension in his temples. “You haven’t told me why you think he could become like her.”

“It’s _you_ who thinks that, not me. And no, I don’t think it’ll happen. I mean… I’m sorry for what I’m going to say but I guess someone should make you realise something and it’s better if it would be me than someone else. He’s nuts but he’s got a soft spot for you and… on the one hand is his fucked up mind which makes him kill and spread chaos, and on the other… you, the only person who is able to influence him. That’s what I’ve concluded from what you’ve told me about you both.”

“What _exactly_ did you conclude?”

“That he might change _just for you_. When he… well, kidnapped me, he knew you wouldn’t like it but at the same time he wanted to show you he could be kind for he knew that you’d appreciate it.”

“And what does that mean?”

“You’re the master of deduction, not me.”

“I can’t _cure_ him if that’s what you’re implying.”

“He’s got a personality disorder, not mental illness. He doesn’t need a treatment but some normality and thanks to you he’s trying to be normal even if his… well, yours as well… definition of normality might be different than society’s.”

“What’s going on?” Sherlock asked suspiciously, realising that Bill sounded more and more weirdly. “And what _it’s better if it would be you_ suppose to mean?”

“I think… and your brother would agree with me… that you’ve taken a huge responsibility letting a madman like Moriarty get close to you” he answered. Sherlock closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, knowing what Bill was going to say. “You’ve become his pressure point and you can influence him so whatever he’d do you’d be responsible for it as well. You make a mistake and hurt him – and he’ll kill someone just because he is angry. You betray him – he will blow up some hotel or lodging house. You leave him – he will blow up half of the city. You’re facing a difficult task and really, Shezza… I don’t envy you. If I were you I’d already blow my brains out.”

“Thank you for the advice, _my friend_ ” Sherlock murmured and opened his eyes to stare at the windshield, finally realising _what was off_. “Do you have more?”

“Well… For the good of the country you should either kill him or make him fall in love with you and live together happily ever after, but I’m afraid none of the options is probable. But I’m not your brother so if you fuck it up, please, warn me, so that I’ll be able to run away from London.”

“Mycroft spoke to you” the detective snapped, not going to pretend any longer he didn’t figure it out.

“Mycroft is still here and he threatened he’d knock my head off if I didn’t talk to you and convince you to get rid of Moriarty once and for all” he confessed and Sherlock winced, disgusted with himself that the emotions made him so blind he didn’t notice Bill mentioning Mycroft a bit too often as soon as they started talking.

“Get him on the phone.”

“Oh God, finally…” the man said with relief and a moment later Sherlock heard his brother’s irritated voice mumbling _you weren't supposed to tell him that_.

“Hello, brother dear” Mycroft said angrily after taking the phone from Bill.

“If you dare to threaten any of my friends ever again you’ll wish you’d never been born” Sherlock said right away.

“You’ll sic your mad boyfriend on me?”

“With no remorse!” he answered, raising his voice. “I’ve told you everything you wanted to know and you let me visit that woman!”

“But that doesn’t mean I approve the fact…”

“You promised you wouldn’t interfere and…”

“Do not behave like a child” Mycroft said harshly. “It’s only a _brother’s concern_. I promised I’d leave you both alone but not that I wouldn’t keep an eye on you. I need to be sure you won’t do anything stupid since the national security is still my…”

“Go to hell!” Sherlock shouted, threw the phone on the passenger seat and watched it fall on the rubber car mat and turned off. He quickly started the engine, shaking with anger. He just couldn’t believe Mycroft went so far, threatened Bill and probably got some information about their investigation out of him. That’s why he let him take Kevin Patton’s documents: back then he was already planning he would pay Bill a visit after coming back to London, manipulate him or rather _force_ him to cooperate. Sherlock didn’t really blame his friend for what happened – he knew his brother’s methods and Bill wasn’t strong enough to stand up to him.

He didn’t suppose Mycroft would use the new knowledge against Jim right away but still… _he betrayed his trust_. And now he knew things _not meant for him_ , he accessed information that Sherlock wanted to have all to himself _and no-one else_. Mycroft had no right to discover the secrets from Jim’s past, they belong to someone else, they belong to _him_ , it was _his_ case, it was _his and Jim’s_ game…! He was mad at his brother and he didn’t care at all that his fury was caused by an irrational jealousy.

_Send me a song_. He wrote on his old mobile when he stopped at the traffic light.  

_Any preferences, honey?_

_Come up with something, you’re a genius after all._

_Oh, bad mood, Sherly? I’ve got something. Hope it’ll cheer you up._

Because of the weak signal downloading the song took almost ten minutes but when Sherlock turned it on, at first he thought Jim mixed up the attachments. Frowning, he listened to the prelude and first verse sung with a bit childish, annoying voice but when he got to the chorus…

_Mama I'm in love with a criminal and this type of love isn't rational._

At the exact moment he heard the lyrics he burst out laughing and the anger at Mycroft, the anxiety caused by Rose and all the worrying conclusions he came up were getting less and less significant with every line of the song. Most of people would say that the lyrics were cheesy or romantic but given that it was Jim – _the consulting criminal_ – who sent him the song… it meant a lot more.

_It did. XXX_

***

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter was really hard to write* but the translation went surprisingly smoothly :) The next one is longer and quite difficult as well (lots of descriptions...) but I'll do my best to translate it as soon as possible. Thank you for all the comments, they really motivate me :)) 
> 
> *When I was writing the part with Rose Patton I did a little research on mental illnesses and consulted my sister who had studied Psychology but still: I'm not a specialist and some things may not be 'medically correct'. I only hope it's convincing enough for a fanfiction ;)


	17. Ireland - 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to translate this chapter - the past few weeks I've been finishing writing a really long story and I didn't have much time left. Now, when it's done, I promise I'll do better ;))

 

***

Sherlock’s mobile stayed turned off for long hours and he didn’t even bother to take it out from under the seat, when he arrived in Clane and parked the rented car at the bus station. However the weather was awful and the places he was going to visit were at different parts of the city, he decided to walk – driving a car required focus and he needed a clear mind.

He gathered all the addresses, links, contacts and other important information from Bill in one place and saved them on his old phone, so that he would be able to use them quickly if necessary. He knew that the mobile which Jim prepared for him might have been under his surveillance and he estimated the chances he really did it at thirty percent. However, he didn’t plan to hide that part of his investigation for too long – he was sure Jim would soon learn about him visiting Rose and if Jim got rid of his cousin who had worked as a spy he must have known Mycroft would eventually discover Kyle Allen’s true personality. By the way, did he even take into consideration the possibility that someone might compare his and Patton’s DNA? Jim was too smart not to think about it so he must have known that killing his cousin entailed a high risk of turning over his cards. If secret service learnt that they were related and found Pattons in Clane… finding documents and people who knew that family twenty years ago would be also possible for them – after all Bill managed to do so using Internet and his skills in a few days. Jim might have deleted all the files and cover his tracks but revealing his past layer by layer and finding all the personas he had ever taken on was possible if you had a proper hint. _The proper hint_ \- thanks to which Sherlock went to Brighton, found Hawkins’ neighbour and learnt about Sinead and the rest of Patton’s family - was Janine. He knew which primary schools Jim attended and he was sure that in time, with _another proper hint_ , he would find the elite secondary school in Dublin and, step by step, learn what Jim did after graduation, probably still using the name Patton, before he became the consulting criminal.

Sherlock knew he was able to do that even though it would be a tedious work – but Mycroft could do the same thing, now, when he knew where to start. However, he wouldn’t focus on psychological aspects and Jim’s past itself but on finding evidence against him… and he would probably find it all, starting from killing Sinead and Pattons. If someone other than Sherlock had visited Rose, they wouldn’t have hesitated to get her to talk. Of course, her statement wouldn’t be taken into account by a court but it would encourage Mycroft to dig even deeper and in the end he would find someone more useful than an older, mentally ill woman.

Maybe his brother really wanted to protect his two pressure points: a younger brother and his reputation but Sherlock hated when Mycroft showed his concern like that. And even if his brother was able to keep him safe he wouldn’t be happy if he did so, since Mycroft thought that the only thing which could ensure his safety was eliminating the threat he believed Jim was. Sherlock was clenching his fists every time he remembered his brother’s face when he promised to leave them alone _if Jim behaved_ – it was all a lie since he met Bill to question him as soon as he came back to London.

Sherlock almost regretted that Jim didn’t blow up the government car with Mycroft inside. The sparkle of fury started growing inside him, making him see red and filling his mind with visions of his brother being hurt in different ways. Walking the streets of Clane and heading towards Lorcan Patton’s old house, he felt that if Mycroft appeared in front of him right now, he would jump down his throat, clenched the fingers on his neck and watch him suffocate and beg for mercy. Sherlock stopped and leaned against a poster pillar, terrified by his fantasies. No, he wouldn’t really do that and he didn’t want Mycroft to die, even though he was angry at him and couldn’t accept the fact his brother manipulated him to confess and betrayed his trust. He wouldn’t have felt like that if only Mycroft had been honest with him and had told him he wouldn’t tolerate his relationship with Jim, since Sherlock believed that  the bitterest truth is better than the sweetest lie. If he had known what Mycroft had been planning… actually, what would he have done?

He took a deep breath and started walking again, remembering Bill telling him that Jim might try to change for the better for him, his own reflection on that idea and conversations with Mary and Irene. He believed Bill was right and that close relationship could get the best out of people but now he also realized that Jim, being who he was, may change _him_ for _the worse_. For god’s sake…! A few seconds ago he was thinking about strangling _his own brother_ just because he didn’t approve his relationship with _the bad boy_. It was dangerous and too close to the conspiracy theory about Sherlock Holmes joining his archenemy to make a murderous, genius duo with him. He shouldn’t let himself even think about such things since joining Moriarty’s web was something he just couldn’t do. _He was on the side of the angels_. And no matter how fascinating Jim seemed to be Sherlock wasn’t going to acquire his flaws nor become like him.

So… If Mycroft tried to separate them in the most definite way… he would have murderous thoughts about him, that one was sure now. But he knew he would fight them as soon as he simmered down. He would go to Jim. He would warn him. He would force him to run away, he would _beg_ if it was necessary, manipulate or even hurt him to make him safe. It would be exactly the same as it was with John, when Sherlock faked his own death. But if all of this wasn’t enough… yes, he would stay with Jim even if it meant the end of the consulting detective and separation from all of his close ones. He wouldn’t want to help Jim in his job and would deny it for months or even years but in the end a boredom would make him give in… or leave Jim to come back to his previous life, even though he probably would have nothing to come back for. Neither of the possibilities sounded appealing but life isn’t a fairytale, where every princess finds herself a prince, ugly duckling turns into a swan, evil witch dies and the rest of the characters live happily ever after.

Choosing between his current life and living with the consulting criminal meant sacrificing something he cared about and he was going to do everything to _not have to choose_. There was only one option: convince Mycroft he was able to control Jim and make him believe that the consulting criminal was more useful for the government alive. Besides he had to change Jim and even if he still wanted to run his criminal empire, he just couldn’t take part in things like terrorist attacks and murders. To achieve that, he had to entertain him in other ways so that the criminal wouldn’t get crazy from boredom and inactivity.

It seemed impossible but he was a genius after all and it wouldn’t be the first time he did the impossible… at least he had to try if the alternatives were unacceptable. He didn’t believe he would ever stop caring for the things he cared now so he wasn’t going to think about any sacrifices. It was out of question.

He reached Lorcan Patton’s old house after forty minutes spent on considering different options and he had only one conclusion: the only option was reconciling Mycroft’s and Jim’s conflicting interest and he supposed that doing so would be the greatest success in his all life. He sighed with disappointment when he saw the building – closed wedding house set to be demolished. He accosted the first person he noticed on the street and, pretending he was a potential customer, started asking why the place wasn’t open anymore.

“But it was closed three years ago, man…!” the old woman answered, putting her shopping bags on the pavement. “The owner moved out and some smart asses came here and what did they say? That it was going to collapse, that there was someone willing to buy the land and the next year the hypermarket would be built here. We need one like asshole on elbow.”

“Do you know why did the owner move out?”

“Who knows? Glad he did so though, ‘cause he was a nuisance in the town. Devil’s seed! People were talking. Those Pattons were shysters and whatever he did here, it never led to anything good.”

“So for now the place is still owned by Pattons? I thought they all moved out after that terrible murder in their family…”

“Well, they did. The boys live in the USA and they’ve never come here after giving that guy well… the authority or something. I call him the owner ‘cause he could do what he wanted but it was still Pattons’ property.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“How could I not? Fancy pants from the capital. Still a kid when he moved in, even younger than Pattons. How was he… Liam McQueeney. A poon hound and a lout, thinking he was a prince. He had a pub in here and a pension house where the only so-called guests were thugs and whores. It was never a wedding house. Who’d like to have a wedding in such a rathole? And then that McQueeney vanished into thin air and that’s it. I’d tell you more but I’ve got to go. Watch yourself. Some people have been interested in that place and somehow bad things happened to all of them. That house is cursed, that’s all you need to know.”

“Thank you for your warning” Sherlock answered before saying goodbye to the old woman. When she disappeared around the corner, the detective, ignoring the fact that it was a broad daylight and a few people were hanging around, passed the _no trespassing_ sign and entered the compound.

The interior of the abandon building didn’t impress him. All the valuables had been stolen, some windows were broken and there were lots of signs that indicated the house had been a playground for local teenagers who had devastated the place almost completely. The odor of mildew was overwhelming, the furniture either broken or fallen apart from the moisture and coldness. Not finding anything interesting on the main floor, he went upstairs and came in the first room, where he grimaced with disgust. There was no furniture but cans, bottles and cigarette butts were scattered all over the room, here and there used rubbers were lying. The next two rooms looked similar but in the first he noticed an empty dresser without drawers and in the second – a cheap bed frame. When he reached a bathroom, he flinched and quickly closed the door and then he took a look on the rest of the rooms. He came back to the hall, went out on the spacious balcony with a broken railing with caution and looked around the untended garden from up there. He frowned when he realized something was off… then he looked up and smirked with satisfaction. He walked through the rooms one more time and after ten minutes he found what he was looking for: on the ceiling in one of them was an entrance to the loft, almost invisible and coated with dust. He didn’t find any ladder and the stairs must have been dismantled. He started frantically looking for something on which he could climb on and finally he dragged the dresser from the other room and got on it. He pushed the hatch to the attic and a few second later he was laboriously climbing up.

The odor of mildew in the attic was even worse than in the rest of the house and it made breathing almost impossible. The first thing Sherlock did was opening the window he had seen from the balcony and waited a minute for the air to freshen up. Then, with a flashlight in his hand he moved forward, looking at the stuff collected in here. Some broken chairs and tables, old beddings, stained tablecloths, tawdry tableware… An commode, surprisingly full of wine bottles – the last one was a proof nobody visited that place after McQueeney decided to…

He lost the train of his thought when a beam of light moved a few feet further. When McQueeney - Sherlock was sure it was him – decided to hang himself in the attic of the house he had been living in for ten years. Short review of the body confirmed his first deduction only partly – hanging was surely the cause of death but the way the crop had been tied indicated it wasn’t a suicide. Sherlock took out the latex gloves he always had with him and started searching the corpse; he found an old switchblade and wallet full of money so whoever murdered that guy, robbery wasn’t the motive.

There was no documents, credit cards or anything which could confirm the identity of the man but it didn’t surprise him. He started looking for something which would be proof it was really McQueeney but the only things he found was a gin bottle and some sedatives. Someone wanted to make it look like a suicide and he was perfectly sure that would be the result of the investigation if the police conducted it.

He sat on the floor and stared at the corpse, trying to deduce who Liam McQueeney really was. Someone from the high school Jim attended in Dublin, someone he knew well and whom he trusted enough to make him a part of his criminal web. Jim must have sent him to Clane shortly after graduation, given him lots of money and a free hand… He sent him to his hometown as a spy and killed him as soon as he decided he wasn’t useful anymore.

Sherlock was leaving Lorcan Patton’s house, not planning to inform the police about his discovery. What was the point after all? McQueeney’s corpse had been hanging there for three years and no investigation would help him. Three years… suddenly Sherlock remembered Jim’s words about the spider which web was damaged - _after destroying it completely, spiders either rebuild it or eat it, to have the strength and material to build the new one… You eliminated the bosses so I couldn’t get to the roaches… And then, you started creating new structures on them._

When Sherlock was destroying Moriarty’s empire he didn’t meet any Irish and didn’t think about it much since Mycroft convinced him that the criminal must have burnt his bridges and that’s why he had never hired anyone from his homeland. It appeared his brother was wrong: Jim _did_ run his criminal business in Ireland but he eliminated the bosses from there in the first place so that no-one would ever connect him to Clane.

Sherlock hurried up, wanting to visit the places he planned for today as soon as possible but even though the first discovery seemed promising, the rest of the Sunday he spent in Clane didn’t give him any new useful information. He went to the place where Owen and Kevin had lived with their parents but all the single family dwellings in that area had been demolished few years ago and a dozen of two-story, grey and ugly apartment building was built in their place. No chance to meet anyone who lived in there twenty years ago or even remember how the area looked like back then.

In the first of the houses Sinead had been living after moving out of her parents – Sherlock didn’t know the full address but found the place without any problems – a young couple from Dublin lived; the house was a wedding gift from their parents. He learnt that years ago the house where Jim’s brothers had been killed was bought by an artist, but the woman sold it quickly and moved out of Ireland and the place stayed empty for a long time since somehow no-one wanted to live in there. None of the people he talked to was willing to give him more specific information and he spent long hours trying to pursue the locals to come forward with no luck. Few times he heard things like _fate, bad luck_ and _unfortunate accident_ but then – suspicious glances, excuses and advices to leave that case followed. The story was shrouded in mystery and it looked like people were still afraid of Sinead Hawkins even though she was long dead. Alice Flynn and Joyce didn’t seem as frightened as the locals but… both women didn’t live here and they must have not heard the odd rumors - for some reason, Sherlock supposed that was Jim’s doing - which scared Clane residents so much.

It was almost eight o’clock p.m. and Sherlock was close to giving up the investigation for today, when on a small marketplace a teenager came to him asking for a lighter. The detective gave it to him even though the boy surely wasn’t of age yet and he shouldn’t smoke.

“You’re new here, don’t you?” he asked and inhaled the smoke from the cigarette.

“I'm not from around here.”

“I can see. And _hear_ ” the teenager laughed. “What a British guy with a dyed hair and an expensive watch could look for in that shithole? I’ve seen you today more than once, picking on strangers and asking about Sinead Hawkins.”

“I haven’t learnt anything.”

“Of course you didn’t. That’s our local ghost story. I’m not impressed by it at all, but the elders, those who knew that fucked up bitch, _are_.”

“Do you know what it’s all about?” Sherlock asked, hoping that he finally found someone who could help him.

“It’s not safe to speak about it aloud. Her magical powers are bullshit but the walls have ears. But… for a small trip charge I can make them deaf” he said and Sherlock reached into his pocket and gave him fifty pounds without a word. “I guess you’re really interested in that story.”

“Do you know a place we can speak freely?” he asked. The boy nodded and pointed a dark alley leading to a small square without most of the streetlamps turned off.

“No-one will bother us in there. Even if someone has seen us, they’ll think we’ve come here to fuck” he said blatantly. “And I’ll tell we actually _did_ to anyone who asks.”

“Get to the point” Sherlock murmured, not wanting to think about the boy’s ways to earn money.

“If you believe the talk… Sinead Hawkins was _evil_. Her boyfriend and two children had been killed in a suspicious circumstances and she was sent to the asylum only to be released few years later. She came back to Clane and moved out from here to the southern part of the city with some new guy.”

“I’m going to go there tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother, you won’t learn anything especially since the house she had been living in burned down a year after her death. You’ve heard that, haven’t you?”

“Actually I’ve got no idea about it but thanks for the information. It’ll save me some time. Do you know something more about that fire?”

“The house was inherited by someone related to her but it was immediately sold to some company. Later, it was rented by different families but nobody could stand the place for more than a month.” He laughed weirdly, threw the cigarette butt away. “Every person who lived there stated the house was haunted and besides there were rumours about the company which owned it… something about insurance and taxes or some other shit like that. The only thing I know it was all about the money, not _the ghosts_. In here…” he pointed Sinead’s previous house “…it was different. After Sinead came back from the mental hospital and moved out with her lover, some freak artist bought her old house for a song and a dime. In the end she sold it as well ‘cause she didn’t like the area or the place had a bad vibes or something. You know…? People like to believe in ghosts but it’s not the dead ones but the living you should be afraid of. Sinead and her family must have upset the big brass, big enough to chase them even after their deaths and scare people away from the places they had been connected to. You’re not the first who got interested in that case but all the guys before you suddenly _disappeared_ or were put in the hospital badly hurt and were too frightened to speak to the police about what happened to them. Every time an ambitious detective or policeman started investigating the case something forced them to give up… sometimes it was an unexpected, large inheritance which made them move out to the other side of the country and sometimes they stayed here becoming a shadows of themselves. There was a policeman, young DI who got involved a bit too much, quite nice guy… actually my friend’s father. He was found dead in his bathroom, stoned and with his wrists slashed. It was ruled a suicide. It is said some thugs were after him, he was threatened and followed all the time and weeks before he died he was scared of his own shadow.

“And what is said about Sinead?” Sherlock asked, being almost sure that the mentioned man didn’t die of his own free will. No point in asking about him.

“The only time when anyone mentions her is when the elders drink too much and even then, they speak quietly and peek at the windows and doors a bit too often” he said and even though till now he tried to act brave, he started looking around with fear. “It is said that when she walked down the street it took one look to see she was _evil_. My grandma used to say that when you looked in Sinead’s eyes, you immediately knew she had blood on her hands. That she liked to see people suffering. That when she was released from the madhouse she got even worse ‘cause… seemingly she looked and acted completely normal, she was able to smile sweetly to clerks and neighbours but sometimes her smile was turning into something which made dogs bark, men pale and women faint. _That’s_ what is said when the lights dim, the alcohol loosen the tongues and people start telling ghost stories.”

“And her children…” Sherlock started “do you know she had another son?”

“That’s possible” the boy answered. “I’ve never heard about it but it seems you know more than me. If that’s true, I feel sorry for that child… well, now that’s probably a grown-ass man. If he’s still alive he’s surely a sicko after a childhood he surely had. Is there anything else?”

“Putting all the ghost stories aside, what do _you_ think about it all?”

“That twenty years ago a mentally ill woman lived here but she was neither diagnosed nor treated and no one knew how to help her” he said after a short pause. “People are afraid of nuts, especially those who’s got some mysterious stories around them. There was nothing paranormal but some people behave like there was. Sinead might have killed her children in a rampage, she may have murdered her whole family and then committed suicide. Now she would be locked in a psychiatric hospital or in prison but back then… no-one would have dared to accused and sentenced to life imprisonment a councilman’s daughter even if she had run on the streets naked with an axe in her hand.”

“Do you think…”

“I think I’ve told you enough” he said and looked at him apologetically. “You know… I’m in no danger ‘cause even if anyone saw us they’d think the only thing I did was blowing you but you…” he paused and run his eyes up and down Sherlock “…you’ve already aroused too much interest and I really suggest you disappear. There’s a small church behind the park, and a hundred feet away - a pub, where you’ll easily catch a taxi. Take one and go back to a place you’ve booked a room as soon as possible.”

“I surely will” he said and after a moment he gave the boy another fifty pounds.

“That was the easiest money I’ve made in months” he laughed.

“Take care” Sherlock answered and did exactly what he was told, took a taxi and fifteen minutes later he was back at the parking lot where he had left his car. He drove to the nearest hotel and when he was in the room, the first thing he did was dying his hair black and preparing different clothes for the next day, deciding the best option was changing his appearance so no one in Clane would recognize him as a man who was wandering around the city the whole day and was way too interested in a _local ghost stories_.

The only place left to see was the cemetery; before he flew to Ireland he planned to visit Kevin’s and Owen’s schools but now he decided there was no point in investigating their past since he already knew everything which was important. He logged in to the website where he bought plane tickets and rebooked the flight from the night to two p.m. o’clock. He’d visit the cemetery in the morning and then – leave the city which appeared to be much more dangerous both for him and the people he talked to than he supposed it would be.

***

Sherlock slept four hours and he managed to fall asleep at all only because he had taken a pill of Zolpidem. Even though it was still dark, he decided taking more wouldn’t be a good idea, so he turned on the computer and checked his e-mail and the news but there was nothing important or interesting. He thoughtlessly deleted messages from fans and spam, answered a few people who wanted him to take their case – rejected them all but gave some clues which other detective or the police might find useful – and then hesitantly typed McQueeney on Google and some social networking sites but didn’t find anyone whose first name was Liam.

He didn’t give up though and started checking other people with that surname who lived in Clane or Dublin. His intuition was right since after twenty minutes he found a young woman’s named Cory McQueeney facebook profile whom he immediately recognized as a nurse from Rose’s nursing home, the one who was looking at him so suspiciously when he mentioned the name Patton. Even though he didn’t get a good look at her back then he couldn’t mistake the woman from the photos for anyone else, especially since her profile contained at least a hundred pictures with her in sexy poses and facial expressions. Sherlock rolled his eyes and started scrolling Cory’s facebook wall, which really didn’t indicate she worked in a high-class nursing home and had an IQ above average.

He saved the link to her profile and started writing an e-mail to Bill, asking him to add both Liam and Cory to their database and to try look for more information about them – especially to find out which high school the man attended. Even if Jim erased information about himself from the school files – which he surely did – he probably wouldn’t do the same thing with the McQueeney’s.

He pushed the computer aside and ran his fingers through his hair, dry after being dyed thrice, regretting the fact he didn’t manage to find a wig store after flying to Dublin. He took a look at the screen and sighed heavily, closing his eyes. There were so many addresses and names he could check but somehow he didn’t feel like investigating – a feeling which was quite rare for him. The internet searching was so impersonal and while done alone it wasn’t even interesting; if Bill was next to him he would be able to spend two days with the laptop on his knees without leaving the room but when he was on his own he preferred going outside, talking to the locals and being the part of the place he was investigating… he almost laughed, realizing how much he needed _humans_ , real and alive and _next to him_.

He analyzed everything he heard in Clane again but didn’t come up with any new conclusions. Jim still had the spies in his home city – the small fishes, since bosses like McQueeny must have been all eliminated; his eyes and ears, seeing and hearing everything and sometimes his _hands_ too, when someone got too inquisitive. But there was more: it must have been them who was spreading the rumors which made Sinead a witch from a ghost story, that scared the locals and besides… the same rumors somehow erased Jim from it for no-one remembered the woman had another son besides the dead twins.

Sherlock didn’t hope he could learn anything more in Clane. If he and Bill knew which school Jim attended to in Dublin he could drive there but without it finding information about _James Patton_ in such a big city wasn’t possible, whereas hacking school servers in the search of McQueeney would take too much time and he preferred doing it in London, not in that doomed place. After what he experienced in Ireland, he didn’t suppose he would come back here soon.

He looked at his wristwatch – it was only three a.m. o’clock and he wasn’t tired but leaving the hotel room was pointless and probably dangerous too. He knew what he should do but he didn’t feel like it so he gave himself few more minutes before he took the mobile which was turned off since the previous day and reluctantly turned it on.

Mycroft tried to call him thirty times and Bill – only one; Mary texted him wanting to know if he left the city and when he would be back since she wanted to invite him as soon as she would come back home from the hospital. _Don’t tell John I’ve invited you ‘cause he’s still mad but I’m sure he’ll get over it if he sees you and if you are nice to him._ The next message was from Irene and Sherlock smiled when he read it.

_You didn’t tell me how the experiment with the mirror turned out._

_Beyond expectations._ He wrote back, not expecting her to answer at this ungodly hour and put the phone aside to stare at it for few minutes, before he sighed and took it back.

_Hello, brother dear. Seeing how many times you’ve called me I guess you miss me. Everything’s alright. I’m coming back earlier._

The phone rang even before Sherlock put it back on the table, which didn’t really surprise him. He knew the conversation with his brother might get tough but putting it off wouldn’t make it any easier. Besides, he needed to plumb his intent quickly as for now he didn’t know what his brother was up to and his ignorance could cause irreparable harm.

“Hello, brother of mine” he started. “It seems you really want to talk.”

“Where are you?” Mycroft asked quickly.

“In Ireland. What do you expect?”

“With him?”

“No” he said, frowning. “Do you think I’d switch sides and go to him after one fight we had?”

“To be honest, yes” he admitted, obviously tense. “Don’t tell me my concern wasn’t reasoned.”

“I’ve told you I was going to watch him, not to join him. Unlike you, I didn’t lie when we met” he said dryly and Mycroft fell silent, as if he was trying to show remorse but Sherlock knew him too well to believe it. “What did you get out of Bill? I’m not stupid enough to believe you only came to him to force him to talk to me.”

“Nothing” Mycroft said and his anger surely wasn’t fake. “Your friend’s loyalty is incredible. He admitted you are investigating Moriarty’s past but that was no surprise for me and he _knew_ that I’ve already found out about it. He didn’t tell me what you found in Brighton and how you learnt about Kevin Patton and their grandmother. You seem to know a great deal about Moriarty’s family since Wiggins literally laughed in my face when I asked about it.”

“And what did he answer?”

“That the only thing which could force him to tell me the truth would be torture, for Moriarty’s anger would be more frightening than mine” he said with irritation. “He only agreed to talk to you because he’s got mixed feelings about your relationship with Moriarty but at the same time he doesn’t think that having that criminal on your side is a bad thing.”

“And you do?”

“That’s an absurd” he snapped. “Moriarty’s a wanted criminal who’ll be sentenced to life imprisonment if caught and I’ve got my reasons to believe there are countries where the death penalty isn’t abolished which could demand his extradition.”

“You haven’t understood my question” Sherlock said, trying not to sound too vexed. “Don’t you think that convincing him to cooperate with the government would give you more profit than putting him behind the bars?”

“I can’t imagine the possibility of _cooperating_ with that man.”

“You wouldn’t need to, that would be on me.”

“ _We are good ones and he isn’t_ ” Mycroft said with conviction. “Giving him amnesty after all he did would be immoral.”

“Are you telling me you’re the paragon of virtue, whose doings are always moral and intentions clear?” Sherlock mocked. “You’re the first person who has ever told me that _the end justifies the means_ and I know you’d be able to do _everything_ he did without blinking an eye if it was required by the secret service. The only difference between you two are _the means_. And maybe the fact that he is at least honest with himself and you’re not.”

“And it doesn’t change anything. I won’t let him…”

“You still don’t get it!” Sherlock snorted, irritated that finding a common ground with his brother was even harder than it had always been. “Jim has connections with terrorist organizations, access to the information of planned attacks and other things that the secret service would never discover. He knows every criminal in that part of the world and, as you may know, some of them aren’t really his friends and the fact he was captured last year is the best proof. He would hand some of them over if only he got something to gain from it.”

“And he would still kill and be one of them.”

“I could make him change… his business profile.”

“I highly doubt it” Mycroft said and Sherlock almost saw him smirking with pity, which made the detective mad.

“You’ve got no idea what’s between us and how much of an influence on him I am!”

“I’m pretty aware of what’s between you two but I don’t believe that my little, innocent brother could use sex to change anyone’s decisions. You’re not the professional courtesan like Irene Adler and you…”

“It’s not about sex!” Sherlock said angrily, mortified by his insinuation.

“Oh, I must have forgotten, you _don’t even sleep together yet_ ” Mycroft laughed. “I’ve got something to tell you, brother dear. If you weren’t interested in sex and relationships for thirty years you’re not _qualified_ in that area at all and you simply _do not know_ what you’re talking about. You don’t understand _your o_ wn feelings so how could you understand that wicked psycho’s? You think that’s _love_ , not just an infatuation but none of you is capable of feeling deeper emotions. You’re overestimating your abilities, believing you could make him feel anything for you. I’ve had him imprisoned for weeks, I’ve analyzed him like no-one else ever did and I can assure you his heart is an empty shell which will never fill with honest emotions towards _anyone_. You’re an idiot if you believe that love could change him. Hearing about cooperating with the government, Moriarty will either die laughing or agree just to sabotage our doings. I’m not going to risk the national security so that my stupid brother could play a fairy turning a pumpkin into a carriage and a villain into a prince. It’ll never work, Sherlock and the attempts might…”

“You don’t know anything” Sherlock interrupted, when he couldn’t stand listening to Mycroft’s speech anymore. “You’ve had him imprisoned for a long time, that’s right, but you wasted it all. I took me two weeks to learn about him more than you would for your whole life.”

“Really?”

“What do you know about his childhood and background, except of the obvious fact he is Irish? What do you know about his pressure points? About people he considers important? About his personas other than Richard Brook?” he asked and Mycroft only snorted. “And you call me an idiot…!”

“So enlighten me, brother dear. Convince me Moriarty is still _a human being_ and that there’s a way to force him to use all his talents and knowledge for a good cause.”

“ _Force_ him…? Those are not my secrets and I’m not the one who has the right to reveal them” he stated coldly. “The only thing you need to know is the fact his past is… fascinating. Frightening and fascinating. He was a genius when he was still a child and his influence and web are much bigger than we had thought.”

“We destroyed his criminal web.”

“We only thought we did. _Kevin Patton_. One of his men, right under your nose.”

“That’s my only mistake and…”

“Only mistake…!” Sherlock said with disbelief. “If I didn’t tell you he was Moriarty’s cousin you’d never find it out! You didn’t come up with the idea to make a DNA match of him and Moriarty when it appeared he was a spy!”

“We would do that in the end, even without your help…” Mycroft started but he didn’t sound convincing.

“And now you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Just leave it. So, brother of mine, what exactly are you proposing?” he asked with all the dignity he had.

“The same thing I proposed two days ago. You stay out of this, stop investigating and let me handle it all by myself. You don’t question my friends like you did to Bill. If you sabotage my doings, our deal is off.”

“You care about him more than about anything else” Mycroft said weakly. “And you will switch sides if I don’t do what you want.”

“It seems you starting to understand. I wouldn’t really feel bad about… what’s the name of it? A high treason? And all the information I’ve already got from you… just imagine what would Jim do with it.”

“I was wrong accusing you of behaving like Magnussen. You’re far worse than him. He was cold and rational at least and you’re ruled by your heart and emotions you don’t even understand.”

“A perfect psychopath materiał.”

“My heart will break if I have to condemn you to death.”

“Mine will break as well if I have to choose Jim’s perfect sniper to kill you” Sherlock answered and they both fell silent. “Give me a chance at least.”

“I don’t have much choice in that case.”

“And you won’t try to use Bill against me ever again” the detective demanded. Mycroft was silent for a moment and when he spoke again, his voice was weaker and calmer than before, which meant the hard bargaining was over.

“You're putting me in a tough spot here” he sighed tiredly.

“There’s no other way.”

“I want to meet Moriarty when…”

“Don’t expect it soon” Sherlock interrupted. “To cheer you up, so that you won’t have a stroke from your grief… Jim knows I hate it when someone dies because of his actions. And he takes that into account. I’ll use that fact but for now that’s the only thing I can promise.”

“My terms don’t change. You’ve got to have your phone active and one step too far…”

“So… you agree.”

“Don’t make me repeat it. It’s already embarrassing enough” he said coldly but his voice couldn’t mean anything other than agreement. “Tell me, brother dear, what happened that you decided to call him by his first name while talking to me?”

“I realised it pisses you off” he admitted and giggled, hearing that Mycroft snorted with exasperation. “Besides, you’re one of the few people who know the truth and I don’t need to hold myself which is kind of… relieving after all the lies I’ve got to tell the others. Is there anything more you want to say?”

“Actually, yes. You’ve mentioned it a minute ago. The kidnapping from a year ago” he said and Sherlock immediately froze. “We’re working on that. I suppose… actually, I’m almost sure, that the terrorists that organised the attack in London’s subway with Moran are behind it. You probably already know that Moriarty was the brains of the operation.”

“But nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened because of you and Moriarty… let’s say his employers weren’t happy about the failure. That’s the only thing I’ve managed to find out for now. I can’t order my agents to investigate the kidnapping of a dangerous criminal which happened a year ago and risk their lives, especially since most of the culprits are probably dead for otherwise Moriarty wouldn’t be alive. I hope you agree with me in that matter.”

“Of course I do. You might ignore him but I can’t expect you’ll… protect him or hunt his enemies” Sherlock said calmly.

“I’m glad you aren’t too blind to understand it” Mycroft answered and spoke again after few seconds. “I’m really worried about you.”

“Don’t bother. I’m still mad at you.”

“Call me if…”

“You don’t need to repeat yourself. I’ve got to go. Take some painkillers and go to sleep. I promise I won’t be the cause of your migraines any time soon.”

“Take care.”

“Goodnight, Mycroft” he finished the conversation, ignoring his brother’s last statements.

The conversation... it wasn’t as bad as it could have been but remembering the moment Mycroft said _none of them was capable of feeling deeper emotions_ still made him grimace. He had no idea about anything. And he said it just because he didn’t understand him and Jim at all.

Sherlock looked at his mobile and saw a new message which he must have got when he was talking to Mycroft and when he checked who sent it – Irene Adler – he didn’t hesitate to open it.

_That’s wonderful, dear Mr Holmes. Am I invited to the wedding?_

_We’re both too romantic to think about the formalities._

_That’s what I once thought too. If you change your mind, I’ll help you choose the wedding rings. I know an amazing jeweler. Good luck._

***

Sherlock spent the rest of the morning talking on Skype with Bill, who called at five o’clock a.m. to speak about his meeting with Mycroft; he confirmed he didn’t tell him any secrets and apologized for talking to the older Holmes at all. Then, they changed the topic and started exchanging information each of them obtained at the weekend; Sherlock described how meeting with Rose went and what he found out in Clane, while Bill told him everything he learnt from Joyce with whom he had been talking a lot since their last conversation. The woman didn’t tell him anything shocking but she mentioned she heard some mysterious stories concerning Patton’s, even though she moved out of the city years ago and wasn’t in touch with anyone from the locals anymore.

“Sorry I’ve got nothing more to tell you, but that chick is so hot I just couldn’t concentrate on questioning her” Bill finally admitted and Sherlock moved away from the computer, frowning in disbelief.

“Do you realize she’s… older than you?”

“Only seven years. I’ve already confessed to her about my real age and, you know, that American thing.”

“For god’s sake, why did you do that?!”

“’Cause I like her and when I told her I’m working with a private detective she started squealing with excitation.”

“And it doesn’t bother her you’re unemployed junkie?” Sherlock asked with irritation.

“Well… the part about a flat in London was actually the truth. And besides, there’s something else. I know you’ve done some sightseeing in Clane but I guess visiting Dublin where he might have been studying would be a good idea too.”

“I doubt he studied in Dublin. What’s your point?”

“He lived in there for six years as a teenager and I decided I could go there after all. I’ll meet with Joyce and she’ll help me since…”

“Wait a minute. You’ve told me you were not going to go anywhere to investigate Moriarty’s past…!”

“I’ve changed my mind when I realised I can combine the investigation with an online fling.”

“I really do not think that flying to another country to meet a woman you barely know is the best idea.”

“Dublin is not a shithole like Clane, where everybody knows everything and where the news travel faster than bacteria. Big cities are different and easier to blend in.”

“And what are you going to do? Break in some high schools in search of his files?”

“I won’t need to” he said, clearly proud of himself. “Joyce has some friends in the media department of her office. She’ll get us journalist ID’s and if it doesn’t work out she has friends in health services too so we can pose as sanitary controllers… besides she’s got a colleague who is a statutory auditor, one working in a tax office and…”

“Enough. I guess you're going to do great after all” Sherlock interrupted, amused by Bill’s enthusiasm.

“I learn from the best” the man said, smiling broadly.

“Have you spoken about her sister?” Sherlock asked to bring his friend back to earth, since Bill looked like he could talk about Joyce and their plans for long hours. Especially about _how hot she is_. He shivered at the thought of talking to _anyone_ about things like that.

“We had more interesting topics and the only thing I know is that her sister moved to the Northern Ireland and they’re not really close.”

“And Jim? What exactly did you tell her about the investigation with _the private detective_?”

“That in fact we’re looking for him, not the Pattons” he admitted and rolled his eyes, when Sherlock gave him an angry look. “She didn’t pry. Actually she’s a bit… chaotic and easy to distract. No matter what I’ve told her, she didn’t seem shocked or angry.”

“Right. So… did she tell you anything about Jim?”

“Not much” he said, a bit embarrassed. “That he was quiet and kept a low profile, had really good marks and odd family. That he moved out and no-one in Clane have heard from him since then. Nothing we didn’t know.”

“Try to talk to her about him again. Maybe she’ll remember something more, I don’t know, if he had any friends in school or something.”

“No problem. Still, I doubt he had.”

After that, Bill told Sherlock about his search for Brighton students. Even though he didn’t achieve anything, he insisted it could be important and that in the end he’ll prove he was right about it. Sherlock listened to it and didn’t interrupt, however he got different opinion and already lost faith that there would be anyone important besides Corey Butler. He didn’t bother to tell Bill that most of the people from Brighton who had been part of Moriarty’s web might have been already dead just like Liam McQueeney – and he only asked him to make a note on those who suddenly _disappeared_ in a mysterious circumstances.

“Owen Patton. You were going to try to learn something about him, weren’t you?” Sherlock asked, suddenly realizing they forgot about him; besides, it was already eight o’clock a.m. and they should end the conversation so that he could visit the cemetery and drive straight to the airport.

“Oh god, how could I forget?!” Bill cried and hit his forehead. “That’s all Mycroft’s fault, he came when I was reading something about that guy. So.. that’s how it was: after he quit his job at Barts he seemed to disappear but then… By accident I found an article which was written just before you and Moriarty faked your suicide. A guy referred to as _Owen P_. caused an accident near London, killed two people and was charged with the involuntary manslaughter. He was sober and so on but the whole case seemed somehow strange even to me but… well. I won’t hack the court database and I suppose it would be too hard even for you but if your brother already knows so much, maybe you could ask him to help us with that case?”

“I’ll think about it” Sherlock said slowly, not sure if it was a good idea. “Is there anything else? I don’t have much time.”

“You’ve got plenty of it ‘till the evening.”

“I rebooked my ticket to the noon. I won’t find anything more in Clane without arousing suspicion and continuing the investigation in Dublin would take more time than I have.”

“You know, you could rebook your ticket to stay in there a few more days...”

“And I would if I didn’t have… something to do in London on Tuesday.”

“Why don’t you postpone it?”

“Because I can’t” he said firmly and Bill realized there was no point in asking about it. Since they conversation died after his statement, they said their goodbyes and a minute later Sherlock was in the bathroom, getting ready to leave the hotel.

He straightened his hair – fortunately, black again – shaved and used a bronzer, not wanting anyone from Clane to recognize him in the cemetery. After a moment he put black eye contacts in and got dressed in the clothes he had prepared the day before. He packed all his things, paid for the room and left the hotel; he sighed with relief, when he got on the car and started the engine for he didn’t feel safe in Clane anymore and was glad he would soon leave the city.

Having reached the cemetery, he bought a small bouquet of white roses and a candle, not wanting to stand out from other visitors and headed towards the place where the Patton’s family tomb was located. It was obvious that the older part of cemetery wasn’t visited often which wasn’t surprising since most of the deceased had been buried there years ago. He reached the destination after a few minutes and when he got to the grave he sighed quietly. Over a dozen people were buried in here and the dates indicated that the names which he didn’t recognised were Lorcan’s parents’ as well as his elder sister’s, her husband’s and son’s. Jim’s grandfather’s, Terry’s, Elaine’s, Dale’s and Sinead’s names were engraved at the bottom of the tomb… and between those and Jim’s great-grandparents were the names Sherlock was looking for. _Shaw and Russel Hawkins._ Two boys born and deceased in the mid-1980s. _Hawkins_ … their mother’s last name which wasn’t surprising – Sinead was single back then and her promiscuous lifestyle might have made her not know who the twins’ father was. He got close to the tomb and carefully touched the engraved names. Who would the twins become if their mother didn’t murder them? Who would _Jim_ become if they were alive…?

Sherlock closed his eyes and stayed like that a minute or two and then came back to reality and slowly put the bouquet on the grave and kneeled down to light a candle. Before he managed to do so, the matchstick went out twice because of the strong wind but then the candle started burning brightly. He pushed it closer to the gravestone, where people responsible for Jim’s suffering had been buried. If he had been religious, he would have prayed but even though his and Mycroft’s parents had been trying to force their sons to memorise all the well-known prayers, he couldn’t remember any of them. Thoughtlessly he cleaned the grave of dried needles and leaves and picked up an old, ugly wreath which was so faded it wasn’t possible to recognise what were its original colours. Who could have left it here? It was one or two years, just like the cracked candle holder, knocked off by the wind and laying on the grass.

He was going back to the car with hunched shoulders, staring at his feet blankly; when he got rid of the trash that he had cleaned from the grave and sat behind the wheel, he felt relieved he was going to leave that place. The wind got stronger, clouds were gathering on the darkening sky and it looked like it was going to rain; even though he had never believed in ghosts, for some reason the gloomy weather made him feel the same thing people from Clane were talking about.

_That family is cursed… Sinead was evil… A doom…_

In that moment he was ready to believe it.

***


	18. Third meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! :D I manage to translate the chapter (the longest of all until now) before my short holiday. Hope you enjoy it :D

***

A deep sleep turned into a dozing, disturbed by unidentified sounds and smells which Sherlock tried to ignore. He didn’t know what time it was and he didn’t care about it at all; every time he was coming out of a deep sleep which he needed so much, he tried to remind himself he didn’t have anything to do and he could stay in bed till noon… or even a dinner time… Yes, a dinner time, not that he was going to eat anything but…

He fell back into sleep but a few minutes later woke up again and savored the fact that he didn’t need to get out of bed for the next few hours. He started thinking about the previous afternoon, when he came back to Baker Street and bumped into Mrs Hudson and Bill, who came to take the flash drive with Corey Butler’s recordings. His landlady started complaining that he had disappeared without a word, that the milk had spoiled in his fridge again, that he wasn’t enthusiastic enough about John’s daughter – didn’t he get MMS with her photo? – and finally, to appease the older woman, Sherlock had to spend some time with her, eating a cake, drinking a tea and listening to the new gossip about their neighbors. Taking the opportunity, he gave the women some cheap souvenirs he had bought when he waiting in Dublin’s airport for his flight and even though she seemed pleased, he had to hear another reproaches about him leaving the country without saying anything.

As soon as Mrs. Hudson left, he and Bill turned on Corey’s recordings which were so boring and full of irrelevant nonsense, that even though after a few hours they only heard a few percent of it they weren’t able to continue. The first thirty minutes was a record of Jim trying to teach Corey how to turn on and off the recorder unnoticed by anyone; the doctor appeared to be really bad when it came to technology and Sherlock still heard the words _I’m afraid I still don’t get it_ in his mind for he had heard it on the recordings at least one hundred times. The sentence somehow mixed into another dream in which he was looking for something in a hedge maze… then, the dream took him into the hospital where he was haunted by the sound of Corey’s meaningless conversations in which he tried to find something useful with no luck.

Last evening he felt exactly the same which was the proof how often dreams were a projection of reality since except of the first thirty minutes which was kind of funny, the recordings didn’t contain _anything_ interesting. Corey Butler was the worst spy ever, he used the recorder without thinking, sometimes he forgot about it for days – Sherlock managed to connect the conversation with Barts’ employees to specific dates – and besides, even though he owned the device for months he didn’t learn how to delete anything from it. As a result, the recording contained long periods of silence which Bill and Sherlock got rid of using a simple computer program before they even started the listening.

Nothing, completely nothing…! Hospital gossips, dull conversations and a dozen situations when Corey was hassling Molly Hooper and trying to hook up with her in such a pitiful way that even Sherlock who really wasn’t a master of flirt would do it better. Another thing which appeared in his dreams: a pushy doctor who was chasing _him_ instead of Molly. Funny thing… it was Sherlock who Corey was ordered to follow but in the hours of recordings he and Bill managed to listen, the detective’s name didn’t come up even once. They didn’t reach that part – or it wasn’t recorded – but Sherlock was absolutely sure that Jim wasn’t impressed by Butler’s dubious results and, knowing him, made it _painfully_ clear to the doctor.

Having woken up from another dream – this time, filled with screams and threats _in Moriarty style_ – Sherlock frowned, feeling something was off; he couldn’t tell what it exactly was without opening his eyes and waking up completely. A strong, sweet fragrance… vanilla and cherry. A homemade pie? No, it was too early for Mrs Hudson to bake a cake and besides – he wouldn’t have smelled it in his bedroom and the fragrance was different than the pastries not… _mealy_ enough. It was more intensive, more… woody. He smelled a bergamot, some tropical fruit and…  cinnamon? _Perfume_. Unfamiliar to him - different than the leather, elegant ones that Mycroft used or fresh, citrus and _cheap_ , typical of John. And different than any perfume he ever had but he liked the fragrance and it was so intriguing that he _could_ use it.

Suddenly the smell became even stronger and a moment later the mattress moved and Sherlock felt a gentle touch on his temple. Cold fingers moved to his cheek and then started running through his hair, slowly and gingerly as if someone didn’t want to wake him up. Someone…! He knew exactly well who it was and the uneasiness caused by the fact that anyone could come into his flat unnoticed lasted only a moment. His heartbeat fastened but he didn’t open his eyes, waiting to see how the situation evolved but Jim’s hand stopped and it seemed he wasn’t going to do anything more.

The long awaited meeting which he craved so desperately in Ireland came and he felt overwhelmed, realising that in a minute… in a few seconds… he would open his eyes and would be able to ask about everything, to look at Jim’s scars and try to deduce him and all his masks, finally having the man right in front of him. He barely managed to restrain from sighing, when Jim stroked his hair and started curling the locks around his fingers. He was so close that the smell of his perfume and warmth were becoming more and more perceptible and at some point Sherlock wasn’t able to pretend he was sleeping and that it didn’t affect him anymore.  

He opened his eyes and looked at the pale face of the man leaning over him. A surprise which Jim tried to hide with a smirk, perfectly combed and slicked back hair, clean-shaven jaw… he shaved less than an hour ago. An expensive, ashy suit, tailored and masking Jim’s recent excessive weight loss, a white shirt with stand-up collar covering the long scar on his neck, a light-coloured tie and a shining cufflinks. He looked like he was going on a fancy dinner and it was impossible he broke in through the window dressed like that… but if he had just _walked_ here it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed too.

“Miss me?” Jim asked, amused by the silent analysis and, as if he realised what he was doing just now, he withdrew his hand from Sherlock’s hair and straightened out. The detective barely managed to restrain himself from catching Jim’s wrist and holding it in its previous place. It was too soon for those kind of gestures… especially since Jim sat on his bed, flawless, perfect and irresistible while he was stuck in the bedding, dishevelled and dressed only in underwear.

“You know I did” he answered, sitting up and when he realised he was naked from the waist up, he nervously pulled the duvet up to cover himself. “I thought you’d come… in the evening” he said, perfectly aware of the fact Jim was staring at him.

“I knew you would think that and that’s why I’ve come earlier” he said and carelessly grabbed the duvet to cover Sherlock’s legs. “I’m a surprise-guest and that’s why I’ll forgive you that I had to make a tea you proposed me two weeks ago _myself_.”

“Vanilla and cherry?” Sherlock asked, smirking and remembering the leaflet which smelled of those and which was a beginning of their second game.

“My favourites” Jim admitted and handed Sherlock a cup of tea. “You’re the vanilla… innocent but intensive at the same time. I’m the cherry… red and vivid, so hard to wash out… sweet and dry at the same time, cherry, cherrrrryyyy…” His smile widened when the detective took a cup from him. “Take a sip. I promise I haven’t poisoned it” he said and giggled, seeing that Sherlock rolled his eyes. Poison was the last thing which he expected taking their current relations into account.

“How did you manage to get in?” Sherlock asked, unable to hide his curiosity. There were so many questions, so many things they could talk about but… he preferred to start with something innocent before they move onto more important things – the previous day he planned everything and set goals he wanted to achieve. Smiling at Jim, he pointed his clothes to indicate what he meant.

“Looking so perfect? Oh, Sherly.” The man giggled shortly and glanced at Sherlock’s lips to speak again only when the detective took a sip of tea. “That’s easy, so easy…! I’ll give you a hint since, freshly awakened, you might be a bit light-headed and you surely need one… and besides, you’re just too cute now to torment you. So, that’s it: _I’ve been there before_.”

“Mrs. Hudson’s other flat. The empty one” Sherlock answered immediately.

“Great!” Jim said cheerfully. “That’s a really convenient place, so convenient, yes… the windows at the back of the building, no-one sees it, nobody ever visits it. I guess I should start paying her a rent taking into account how often I’ve been using it lately.”

“That’s how you broke into my flat to drop me off those little… souvenirs” Sherlock said, amazed by the fact he didn’t think of it before.

“That’s pretty obvious.”

“And today you’ve come there again just to…” He ran his eyes up and down Jim again and laughed. “To get dressed up.”

“I hope you like it” Jim said and his eyes glowed strangely in… desperation _. Admit it, please admit you like me when I look like that._

“You know I do” he answered quickly, maybe a bit too quickly to sound naturally. Jim’s face went completely blank as if he was waiting for something more but Sherlock, when he tried to speak again, felt that he couldn’t articulate any words. Was he nervous…? No, that wasn’t that, it wouldn’t make sense. He was a master of deduction since deducing people and pointing out their flaws was easy but… expressing something… _positive_ was a lot harder and now it seemed almost impossible. “I really like you in… I like your hair combed like that” he finally coughed up and as soon as he said it he realized it wasn’t the right thing to say since Jim was staring at him unmoving and silent. “I like you in this suit and colors and _everything_ , please, tell me that’s enough for it’s getting more embarrassing with every word I say” he blurted out.

“Please, tell me a little bit more” Jim purred but despite his flirtatious voice his facial expression didn’t change a bit. It seemed like he put on a mask of indifference and didn’t know what to do with it… how to act and which of his personas he should show to… to what? To make Sherlock compliment him? It sounded absurd and Sherlock almost ground his teeth, unable to deduce Jim when he surely didn’t want to show his real… to show _any_ emotions. He knew so much about him, he discovered so many secrets from his past, they had been texting and some of their messages were almost intimate and now, when he got the man right in front of him, he couldn’t figure him out just because Jim didn’t want to show him _any_ of his faces.

“I’m really glad to see you so stop disguising yourself. You’ve promised me that when we meet we won’t play games anymore” he finally said it seemed to work… partly. Jim’s lips twitched and a moment later the man loosened up a bit but Sherlock had no idea if he wasn’t acting again. Then, Jim’s fingers, which was clutching the duvet, straightened and he reached for the other cup of tea standing on the bedside table.

“Is it better?” he asked in a weird voice and pulled up the cup to his lips. “I could jump on you as well. Or start to shoot at the walls. Or smash that precious pottery. How do you want me, Sherly…?”

“ _Normal_. I’d be most pleased if you stopped fooling around” he answered, took few sips of his tea and put the half-empty cup back on the table. He ignored the resentment which showed on Jim’s face and straightened up, trying to look as decent as it was possible being dressed only in underwear and wrapped in a duvet. “Mycroft. We need to get some things straight and then I’ll be all yours.”

“All mine? And you’ll do whatever I ask?” Jim smirked insinuatingly, finally getting rid of his mask of indifference.

“I’ll _let you ask_ and then I’ll think if I want to do that” he answered, trying not to show the relief from the fact that after the short nervousness they were talking casually again. There were important matters to clarify which couldn’t wait since it determined how the further conversation would go. “What are you going to do as regards his demands I’ve told you about?”

“I’ve got to be a good boy if I don’t wanna a boom-boom time?”

“Do you think it’s funny?”

“Incredibly” he said, changing his mask and turning into the version of himself Sherlock quite liked even though it sometimes frightened him: a joking, infantile and careless jester who liked gallows humor and gory threats. It was familiar, neutral and somehow _safe_. Jim must have sensed what Sherlock thought about it because he looked more comfortable now. More… natural, just like some people looked when they get home after a hectic day, take off the ties and suits and change into their favorite sweatpants and an old t-shirt. Did Jim felt like that when he changed his current mask to one he liked better? Quite possible. “I have no doubt that _the more boring of Holmes brothers_ would really do that, you know… the imprisonment, breaking fingers and ribs, tearing off nails, waterboarding, blah, blah, blah and quick bang-bang to end it all” he said finishing the sentenced with his hand joined together in a gesture of shooting. “Actually, when I reconsidered it, it doesn’t seem appealing anymore so I’ve decided to be a good boy for a little longer. No consultation concerning perfect murders or blowing up the parliament, I promise! You know I can be a good boy. I have been lately, haven’t I? The only time I wasn’t was that little accident which happened when we were playing a game but no-one innocent died and…”

“We’ll talk about what happen back then later” Sherlock interrupted when Jim started changing the subject. “Unfortunately, you being _a good boy_ is not enough for Mycroft.”

“Oh really?” he snapped with irritation, clearly not wanting to talk about Mycroft. “What more does he want? Should I set up a foundation and give all my money to charity? Or maybe put on a sackcloth and beg him for mercy kneeling down on peas bags?”

“Give him some information” the detective answered and immediately regretted his directness since a grimace of anger distorted Jim’s face.

“Tell me you’re joking” he whispered but his furious tone indicated that he could start screaming any moment.

“Why would I?” Sherlock asked and took a deep breath. “I know his demands sound insane but I had to tell you about it. That’s what he wants for leaving us alone.”

“And what will happen if I say no?”

“I can deceive him for a couple of weeks, lying that I’m working on persuading you” he said slowly, not wanting to answer directly or repeat Jim what Mycroft would do hearing about his refusal. “It’ll give us more time to think about it.”

“I feel like hiring someone who would tear his tongue out and force him to eat it.”

“I’d be most pleased to tell him that” Sherlock tried to joke, not wanting Jim to get mad again.

“Tell him…” the man started in a seemingly calm voice which was worse than screams – they would at least be more natural reaction in that situation. “Tell him I’ll consider it but if he does anything to force me to decide faster, you will suffer for…”

“Bad idea” the detective stopped him. “He states he does it all because he’s concerned about me. If he believes I’m in danger, it will be a sufficient reason for him to kill you.”

“So tell him to fuck off ‘cause I need a lot of time to think about it and if he thinks I would betray people who trust me just because some asshole from the government asked for it, he’s just as smart as jellyfish!” Jim shouted and Sherlock sighed, remembering the moment he realized that convincing Jim to cooperate with the government would be almost impossible. “I’m not going to switch sides and work for anyone! I won’t sacrifice everything I’ve been building for years just to…”

“ _Kevin Patton_ ” Sherlock said, perfectly aware of the fact that nothing else would stop Jim. He expected the conversation could turn like that but hoped he wouldn’t need to make Patton a bargaining chip. At the sound of the familiar name Jim paled and fell completely silent. “They did a DNA test and found out that the man posing as Kyle Allen wasn’t really him. You didn’t know that Patton was wanted in the U.S.A., did you?” he asked and Jim hesitantly nodded.

“What more do they know?” he asked quietly in a voice deprived of either anger and any emotion whatsoever.

“Nothing, since I told Mycroft to abandon the search and in return I promised to watch you. The case has been suspended and my brother waits for a confirmation from me that _yes, you’re considering cooperating with the government_. Now it doesn’t sound that insane anymore, does it…?”

“And what do _you_ know?”

“Enough to realize…” he paused and, with some uncertainty, reached his hand towards Jim’s clenched fist. He remembered Rose Patton’s words and he knew how Jim would take the information what Sherlock found out but he hoped that the simple gesture commonly considered as an act affection would make it easier. “That if they did DNA matching tests they would learn more about Kevin Patton’s identity and affinity.”

“That’s why you went to Ireland…” the man murmured. “And it was _you_ who visited…” he paused and stared at Sherlock in fear which surely wasn’t fake.

“Better me than Mycroft’s men” he said, tightening his fingers on Jim’s shaking hand. “I won’t use it against you. That’s not what I…”

“How much do you know?” Jim interrupted him. “What did you find out? What...”

“Calm down. Do you think I’d tell you if I…”

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!” Jim screamed raising his voice so unexpectedly that Sherlock flinched. Still, he didn’t pull away, knowing that Jim finally let himself show his real emotions and all his fake, calculated masks started fading away. His face regained its colours and his eyes, usually dead or mocking, finally showed strong feelings; not the kind Sherlock wanted to see but Irene was partly right stating that madness and amusement were the only things Jim were able to feel. That were the ones he showed most often but… sometimes he was scared, just like seconds ago… or shy and warm like he was for a moment in Janine’s house. Sentimental, when he was hugging Sherlock’s scarf on Bart’s rooftop. Tender, when he was touching his hair, thinking the detective was asleep and uncomfortable when he was deducing his experiences from a year ago. All of that wasn’t fake so… well, it seemed Irene wasn’t right after all, even if her observations would be correct if you saw only the first layer of Jim’s twisted personality. Or If you only saw a perfect mask of _Moriarty the consulting criminal_.

“Kevin Patton is… was related to you” Sherlock finally said, pushing away the intrusive deductions and memories. “Don’t ask how I found out because today’s not a good time to talk about it. I _will not_ use it against you and I won’t let Mycroft do that.”

“I don’t have even one reason to believe you since Mycroft…” he stopped and got more tense again. He clenched and then straightened his fingers, bit his lips and for the first time since he came he got completely serious. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. A terrible, _terrible_ mistake.”

“Not checking what Patton did in the…”

“No, you moron!” he hissed bitterly. “It wouldn’t matter if I played everything else differently since I wouldn’t need to worry about your knowledge concerning Kevin if only…” he paused again and looked straight into Sherlock’s eyes. “I can read you, I really do. I might not be a master of deduction but I see things ordinary people see without problem and which you don’t see at all. If I didn’t decide to test you I would have nothing to worry about.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You missed the moment our game started” he answered and an unpleasant smirk appeared on his face, but then his expression got neutral again. He looked down on their joined hands and pulled his away to stare at the scars on his wrist. “Our second game started when I appeared on TV screens and you texted me. When we met at Janine’s house you confirmed you were going to take up the challenge and then, on Bart’s rooftop, we set up the rules but… you were wrong thinking out game was the riddles, _blue hints_ , bombs and kidnappings. All of this had happened before…!” he lilted but then started speaking normally again. “Those were only distractions. The additives to _the real game_. And the real game…” he raised his head and looked at the detective “was that thing with the government car which I blew up. Don’t you see now, Sherlock?” he asked and unexpectedly took his hand, clawing his nails into Sherlock’s skin. “I wanted to test something, I did it and I won while you didn’t even realise you were losing.”

“The pressure points…” the detective mumbled. Jim nodded and snorted with irritation.

“Yes, but you seem to still think that I only showed you your weakness you didn’t know about while I did something else: I created it, I created your pressure point. If I hadn’t threatened to kill Mycroft, you wouldn’t have realised he’s important to you. Not because you wouldn’t have had the chance to realise it but because he wouldn’t have become important if not for me…! And if I didn’t make him your pressure point I could just deny him, manoeuvre you into a high treason and make you forsake all that funny morality and loyalty. I could do that, or rather I _could have done it_ if I hadn’t given you an antidote for me in the form of your brother…!” he cried and fell silent and completely motionless again.

“Why… why did you want him to be my pressure point…? You must have known that…”

“Because I had to protect my little sister and I decided it would be fair you’ve got your own sibling to protect” he interrupted with anger. “I didn’t foresee the possible consequences.”

“Mycroft doesn’t know yet…”

“A hard comfort. Mutual pressure points are so evident it’s only a matter of time. Just look at us. Have you ever had any doubts?”

“You’ve never hidden it.”

“No, I haven’t” he admitted and gently brushed Sherlock’s knuckles with his fingertips. In comparison with his cold facial expression and narrowed eyes the gesture seemed out of place, as if Jim consisted of two different personas, which was both fascinating and disturbing.

“You’re more important than Mycroft” Sherlock said, trying to concentrate on the conversation, which was difficult when all of his senses were busy with deducing Jim. “But I wouldn’t like having to choose between you two.”

“I know” the man said with exasperation and something similar to giving up. “Just leave it. I fucked up and it can’t be undone. The advantage of knowing Magnussen was that he made me realize some important things, like the fact it’s almost impossible to get rid of your pressure point and…”

“Even if your pressure points are… in conflict?”

“In the best-case scenario the incompatible pressure points lead to frustration in the worst – to a suicide. Believe me, I talked about it with him and I had a lot of time to truly understand it. He had a separate room in his mind palace, where he collected the stories of people with _incompatible mutual pressure points_.”

“To be honest, Magnussen is the last person I’d like to talk about. _The game_. Tell me about the game” he asked, even though he knew he probably shouldn’t leave the case of Mycroft’s demands yet. “You’ve told me it wasn’t just the riddles. What was the important part of the game besides the government car?”

“I won’t tell you anything until you confess what you found out about Kevin and what you did in Ireland.”

“All right” Sherlock said reluctantly, since that wasn’t how he planned the conversation. “You’ll tell me what you’ve guessed yourself and I’ll tell you how far I’ve got to.”

“You tried to find information concerning my new criminal web” Jim said and Sherlock had a hard time not to flinch after hearing the claim which was so terribly _wrong_. “You’ve been searching it since you realized I’m alive. You destroyed my old web and you want to know everything about the new one to have me in your pocket and the knowledge is… how did Irene call it? A life insurance. That’s exactly the same. The knowledge will keep you safe but you won’t use it against me just like she. On the other hand, there’s Mycroft who might change your mind in that case.”

“So you think I’m investigating your criminal web to blackmail you? What does that gain me? I mean… what do you think I want from you so that the only way to get it is blackmail…?”

“I don’t know and it seems completely irrational and maybe that’s what makes you so interesting” he said and his cold voice got flirtatious for a moment. “So, you’ve found out about my cousin. I guess you learnt something in Brighton too. And that you and John-wannabe are still searching for more…” Suddenly he smiled and leaned towards Sherlock. “You didn’t listen, honey. I’ve told you I’ve changed my web’s structure. That’s not a web of connection where after finding one person you’re able to reach everyone else, like it was before.”

“If you state I’m not a threat to you, why did you get so mad after you heard the name Patton?” Sherlock asked innocently.

“Because I overestimated your abilities” he said and his smirk turned to a… relieved smile? Or something like that. It seemed Jim turned down some theory and it calmed him down. “How did you find Kevin’s grandmother?”

“Their last name” Sherlock answered, a bit confused that Jim tried to hide his affinity with Rose and… oh. He was trying to pretend that he and Kevin were related but only the latter was related to Rose – which meant he didn’t know that when the detective found Rose he already knew the specifics of Patton’s and Hawkins’ family tree. He still thought that Sherlock was looking for information concerning his criminal activities, not his past and different personas. “When I discovered you were related I got a foothold.”

“DNA tests?” Jim asked and Sherlock only smiled, not wanting to lie to his face. “Well, well… And Rose Patton? Even with the name…”

“When we were playing our game, Bill had a lot of time and Kevin was listed as a contact person in her files” he admitted, since that was at least the truth. “You already know that I visited her and you surely realize that talking to her wasn’t really useful in your new web case so… I consider the trip to the nursing home a failure” he finished and… actually it wasn’t a lie as well: he really regretted the fact he went to see Rose unprepared, without specific plans and not realizing how bad her mental condition was, even though her files were clear about it.

“At least you got the chance to see my beautiful homeland” Jim said, a bit amused. “All right. I know everything I wanted to know. Keep digging, good luck.” He smirked and turned his head with a gleam in his eyes; he got smug, calm and relaxed after he decided that his secrets were safe.

“So… let’s get back to the game” Sherlock said, relieved that the most difficult part of their conversation was behind them. “Besides Mycroft, what was important?”

“Rescuing that bitch who gave you a bad name a few years ago” the man answered, smirking.

“ _You_ did it, not her” Sherlock pointed out but Jim only rolled his eyes.

“But she and the other guy helped me a lot. And you, despite the fact you hate her, ran to help her and seemed even more motivated when you realized you were looking for her, not someone else. Why?”

“Because I know her and my friends were already searching her.”

“And that’s it?” Jim asked with a disappointment. “Well, it’s good I didn’t blow her up. I guess you wouldn’t have been impressed if I had done it.”

“Would you blow the building up if I didn’t rescue her on time?”

“If you hadn’t been inside I surely would have. But…” he paused for a moment. “The game’s over so I can tell you the truth. When you got in the building I enabled _a god mode_ for you. You didn’t notice, did you?”

“Notice _what_?”

“The time. The bomb exploded exactly a minute and seventeen seconds later than it should have” he laughed loudly, seeing Sherlock’s expression. “The counter was fake. The remote was in my hand the whole time and I was waiting for you to get out safely. What would be the point of killing you?”

“What more was fake?” Sherlock sighed, ignoring the last question.

“The rape victim. She’s a young chick working for me. She allowed my men to beat and drug her and a bit of make-up made it quite convincing, didn’t it?” he asked and Sherlock groaned, realizing how many times he had been tricked. The only thing he could do now was to ascertain her identity from the police files but it wouldn’t be enough to make up for what he felt after discovering her. Well… even _that_ might be impossible since Jim’s men might have taken her from the building before the police came so that the only thing they discovered was the dead man.

“And that guy you killed? The fake rapist?”he asked, not wanting to think about the young woman working for Moriarty.

“The police would surely thank me for luring him into a trap and killing. It saved a lot of taxpayers money which would have been spent on the investigation, trial and prison. He wasn’t a good boy, I assure you. You can mention it to your brother, he’ll be impressed” he said mockingly.

“What more?” the detective asked with a sigh, finally aware how much of their game was only a part of a show. On the one hand it was kind of comforting on the other… Donovan could have been killed and it was hard to forgive Jim that.

“John’s wannabe. You weren't as upset about kidnapping him as you…”

“You didn’t do _your worst_ ” Sherlock interrupted him. “He told me it didn’t even feel like being kidnapped. You didn’t care about the game at its end. Why?”

“You know why” Jim answered with a soft voice and looked at Sherlock as if he was expecting he would be the one who would say it aloud.

“Because you realized I didn’t like our game anymore. Was it _the only_ reason?”

“In a way, yes” he admitted after a few seconds. “You told me before you don’t like the riddles for the sake of the riddles. It seems you don’t like those when someone’s in danger as well. There was no point in continuing it and I ran out of the ideas how to impress you. At the end the only thing I wanted was to get you exhausted… since till then I had never seen you like that. That’s all you need to know.”

“The blue feather. You didn’t use it.”

“Oh, you remember…” he laughed. “I didn’t ‘cause it wasn’t a part of the game. But it _does_ mean something. Think about, the blue feather, what could it mean…?”

“A pigeon…?” Sherlock said, since it was the only deduction he had.

“Right. And? Does nothing occur to you? _Nothing_ …? Now I’m disappointed. Don’t you remember? Something… untypical?”

“A pigeon’s heather you dyed blue. How could it be…” he paused, feeling there was a connection to something important but he couldn’t remember what it was.

“Oh come on” Jim encouraged him. “Connect it to one of the riddles. Let’s make the last one. A bonus round of the game” he said staring at Sherlock’s face. _The closed trinket shop, leaflet smelling vanilla and cherries, colourful banners and hairpins, closed office with a bomb, Gameboy, old phone, imprint from a cash register, bill, arrows._ The detective analyzed all of these once again but nothing seemed to match. The songs…? No, none of the lyrics said anything about feathers or pigeons. “Are you giving up?” the man mocked. “I guess I start to regret the fact I didn’t make it part of the game.”

“Let me think” Sherlock snapped, trying to ignore Jim’s amusement. Blue, blue… no, that couldn’t be a case, it had to be about the pigeon, that specific kind of bird, it wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

“Do you want a hint?”

“No!” he snorted angrily.

“ _The names_ ” Jim whispered, ignoring his protest.

The names… The only name he remembered was Booom-bom but there were surely more of them. The French restaurant, radio station in which he heard one of the passwords, the office for the company where he found Donovan… he deleted all the names from his mind palace. Maybe Jim meant the name of the band from the song he heard in the trinket shop? _Ash_ and a pigeon? Absurd. And the souvenirs he found in there… he analyzed it all once again and suddenly the answer hit him.

“Wandering Candles” he murmured and bit his lips, when Jim smiled but didn’t say a word. “A  pigeon… _Ectopistes migratorius_ which could be translated as a _migratory wanderer_ and which English name is a _passenger pigeon…_!” he cried and clapped his hands with joy. “So it was you! You wrote that bullshit conspiracy theory that John is you and that…”

“Someone considered dead came back” Jim finished. “And John _is_ me. Do you _really_ think that’s bullshit? But we both know that's not quite true. Sherlock, _Sherly_ … I’ve told you I can read you. I am _the new John_ for you, I, not that scrawny junkie. New and better since you weren’t the old one’s pressure point. Upgrade to a newer model… From Dublin. Just like the crazy story I wrote said.” He smiled broadly, looking at Sherlock who fell silent. After a moment Jim rolled his eyes, leaned forward to take off his shoes and shifted on the bed, crossing his legs. He placed his right hand on his knee and reached out the left to Sherlock, to entwine their fingers once again. “You haven’t said a word for you know that’s the truth. You let it happen and you liked it, because pressure points for whom you don’t matter are a terrible thing. And the best option is to push them aside so that they don’t hurt you, isn’t it? It is. Yes, yes, yes…” he lilted, stroking Sherlock’s palm and then moving his fingers to his wrist and forearm. “That’s why things have soured between you two. You accepted John-wannabe and Mycroft when you were looking for an audience, since the real John couldn’t be that anymore. I’m curious… what did you feel when you realized that?”

“What?”

“That he doesn’t care about you like you care about him. Then, in Appledore…” He clenched his fingers on Sherlock’s elbow and then moved his hand back to his wrist. “When you were shooting Magnussen, knowing that you were sacrificing yourself for someone who wasn’t worth it. You didn’t answer when I asked the last time. What did you feel?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I’m jealous, so very, very jealous” he said, accenting every single word. “If I were you I would kill him because a pressure point who doesn’t care about you is a serious threat. Do you want to ask why he’s dangerous? I see it in your eyes. Come on, ask me.”

“John isn’t a threat. He’s neither me nor you nor Mycroft, he’s got no idea how much influence he is on me and even if he did, he would never use it against me because he isn’t like us” Sherlock said dryly and Jim froze at the tone of his voice. The detective frowned, watching him closely and trying to ascertain if that was one of the moments when Jim, seeing that Sherlock didn’t like his behavior, put on a mask. He decided to test it, changing his tone. “John is my friend” he said gently are more calmly than a moment before. “He’s been dear to me and you know it. He’s still important. Leave him out of this and don’t dare to suggest you could kill him ever again. Unlike Mycroft, John is just as important to me as you are and if you threaten him, I’ll be on his side.”

“Would you protect me if _he_ threatened _me_?” Jim asked quietly. A mask of uncertainty, low self-esteem, old complexes and a plea for tenderness… a familiar one. The right one, because seeing Jim like that made Sherlock feel he couldn’t raise his voice or even use the dry tone like moments ago.

“He wouldn’t threaten you unless you provoked him” he said slowly. “And if he did… yes, I would protect you.”

“And what if…” Jim spoke again, moving closer to Sherlock and looking at him with round, pleading eyes “…he discovered what’s between us and gave me up to the police? What if they came here and you knew it was all his fault? What would you do?”

“I’d tell you to cooperate with Mycroft.”

“Yes, yes, since he would help me if I did” Jim said impatiently. “But what about John? What if he came here and saw me and called the…”

“If he saw you in my flat he would have reasons to believe you want to hurt me so calling the police would be justified. As long as he doesn’t know the truth about us I can’t expect him to trust you.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“He would have a heart attack and make his daughter an orphan” he said shaking his head at that absurd idea. “Some day he will realize I’m not looking for the evidence against you but that’s not the right time to tell him anything.”

“I don’t want him to know. Ever” Jim said, raising his voice and the mask of shyness and uncertainty disappeared in a flash. “You’re mine and no-one else’s and I don’t want anyone stepping in!” he screamed and Sherlock froze at that sudden change of his mood which reasons he didn’t understand. “I don’t want him to get close to you! Him or Irene or Molly or anyone else!!! If he dare to bother you he'll wish he'd never been born!!!”

“Calm down!” Sherlock cried, cutting his hysterical rant and deciding that was the moment he had to ask about something that had been nagging him for a long time; he didn’t think they would get to that point in such circumstances but Jim’s behavior gave him no choice. “What's got into you?!”

“Don’t be mad at me” the man said quietly, hanging his head and clenching his fingers nervously.

“I’m not mad. I just don’t understand why are you behaving like that” he admitted and for a minute he waited for a reaction but got none. “I’ve got a question, one of many I’d like to ask. Do you realize that sometimes you behave as if you had DID?”

“I’m not an idiot, of course _I do_ ” he answered immediately and Sherlock couldn’t tell if the question surprised, irritated or amused Jim.

“Are you doing it on purpose or is it the truth?” he asked but Jim fell silent again. “I’m sure you’ve never been diagnosed but you’re intelligent enough to conclude it yourself.”

“I won’t tell you anything. It would spoil the fun” he said and raised his head, but his face was covered with another mask, this time vicious, crazy and dangerous. “Besides, what profits would I have from telling you the truth? If you learn what’s wrong with me, you’ll get too many aces and I’m not going to expose myself like that.”

“What shall I do to convince you I’m not going to use your weaknesses against you?” Sherlock sighed and Jim only smirked.

“Lots of things come to my mind but you won’t like any of them. And Mycroft…! He’d be devastated if he heard of half of the things I’d like you to do.”

“You’ll only trust me if I make all those conspiracy theories come true? The ones about joining you and high treason?” he asked and Jim laughed maniacally, clearly amused.

“I don’t need you in my web, you’re on the side of the angels and you’d hate me really quickly if I hired you. You got a problem with authority figures, you wouldn’t follow my orders and you would sabotage every case you don’t approve. I don’t want to hire you and I’ve never had. If Mycroft is afraid of that possibility, you may reassure him and by the way – you may tell him he’s an idiot if he thinks I’ve ever wanted you as my employee.”

“I can’t imagine anything more devastating than that. So? You’ve said there’s _a lot of things_ I could do to make you trust me.”

“For a start a kiss would be enough but you told me you’re not interested when we met on Barts rooftop and…” he paused and his expression changed. “But you would never do that. A virgin which can’t even think about sex. Don’t look at me as if you are going to do that. Don’t pretend…” he fell silent when Sherlock leaned towards him and put a hand on his neck. The detective slipped his fingers beneath Jim’s stand-up collar, caressing the scar on his skin, irritated he couldn’t see it properly but… he moved his thumb a bit and smiled _. An elevated heart rate_. He looked up and stared at Jim’s slightly parted lips and then at the dark eyes with dilated pupils.

Making a decision took him less than a second. He braced himself against the mattress with his free hand and moved closer to the man, frozen from the shock, turning his head. A moment later their lips touched and the amount of feelings which engulfed him made him lose his ability to think straight. The way Jim’s lips felt under his, the taste of fruity tea and mint chewing gum, intensive smell of perfume, which was getting even stronger when Jim’s pulse started racing, warmth and softness and Jim’s absolute submission when he was parting his lips wider. His hand was shaking when he clenched his fingers on Sherlock’s shoulder and the detective sighed into his lips, realizing how innocent Jim’s touch was. He didn’t even think of doing anything more since the almost motionless kiss was enough for now. It was really pleasurable but Sherlock didn’t _see stars_ which John’s e-mails to his girlfriends were describing and which happened in soap operas and cheap romances… it was warm and sweet and much more sensual than the kiss he and Janine shared, but it wasn’t like a thunder, it had nothing to do with _begging for more_ and the feeling as if the world was falling apart and…

And everything changed when Jim put a hand on the back of his neck, pressed it and deepened the kiss. All the rationality and deductions faded away, replaced by emotions and senses. Nothing mattered but _here and now_ and suddenly it felt… so simple and just right. He didn’t need to pretend anything like he did when he was kissing Janine, he didn’t have to force himself to the physical intimacy, he didn’t have to convince himself that he should feel something since now _he_ just felt it and for the first time in his life someone else’s closeness and touches were affecting him so much. Jim was kissing him slowly, without an intrusive passion but with kind of _tenderness_ , caressing the back of his neck with his fingers gently, as if he was waiting for a sign he could do something more. Sherlock sighed quietly and blindly moved his left arm forward, until he reached Jim’s crossed legs. He rested his hand on Jim’s thigh, opening his mouth a bit wider, hoping the man would see it as sufficient encouragement…

And _he did_ , since a moment later he was wrapping his arms around Sherlock and pulling him closer, pressing his hands against his naked back desperately and scratching his warm skin. Then he deepened the kiss, pushing his tongue into Sherlock’s mouth and that, combined with their closeness, made the detective shiver. The pleasure spread from the places Jim was touching through his whole body up to his fingertips and then it started concentrating in his abdomen, getting so irresistible he didn’t know what he was doing anymore. He started kissing Jim fiercely, pleading him without words to do… _something_ , to do all the things which Sherlock had always considered alarming and embarrassing…

And that’s why, when Jim suddenly pulled away, the only thing Sherlock could think of was to have him back in his arms. As soon as possible. _Right away_.

“This…” Jim started and nervously brushed a few strands of hair back from his forehead. “Whatever I’ve expected of our meeting… it wasn’t… this…” he managed to say and gently took Sherlock’s wrist to move it away from his upper thigh and only now Sherlock realized _how far_ he reached with his fingers.

“Why did you stop?” he asked with reproach and hurt, which for some reason brought Jim’s self-confidence back. He snorted as if he saw no point in explaining the obvious but after a moment he spoke with a patient and calm voice.

“Because if I didn’t now, it would be even harder to stop myself from taking what you’re not ready to give. Even though it turned out you… How to say it…? That you’ve got nothing against kissing on a first date I doubt it’s the same with having sex” he said which made Sherlock’s cheeks turn red. “And that’s what would happen if I didn’t stop, honey” he added and smoothed the wrinkles on his shirt and straightened his tie. If his hands weren’t shaking, Sherlock would _almost_ believe that the man was as calm as he tried to pretend. “You’ve earned an answer… of course if you still remember the question you’ve asked since looking at you…”

“I’m not kissing you ever again if you’re going to mock me about it.”

“Oh, I really don’t think you’re able to make good on such threat” he laughed but after a moment he got more serious and looked straight at Sherlock’s flushed face. “ _Dissociative identity disorder_. That’s what every psychiatrist would have said if I had ever been examined but… that's not entirely true.”

“So you’re faking?”

“Well… that’s not true either” he stated and went silent for a few seconds. “Y _ou’ve earned an answer_ and that’s the only reason I’m telling you this. I often… bring a tiny part of me to the surface to pretend someone I want people to think _I really am_. You’ve seen it yourself but you suppose I don’t really do that on purpose and consciously but actually… well. I do. Do you get it now?”

“You… You really suffered from DID once. There’s no other possibility” Sherlock said, slowly recovering after what just happened when he had to force his brain to work again. Jim nodded, encouraging him to move on. “You may have started a therapy or maybe tried to cure yourself on your own since you prefer not being treated by anyone but yourself. But during the therapy, no matter what it was, you realized that multiple personalities, even those you can’t fully control, give you more possibilities than the _sanity_.”

“Good!” Jim smiled and started twirling on his fingers one of his cuff links which unfastened when they were kissing. Sherlock caught himself staring at Jim’s hands so he hastily looked up at the man’s face, which was cold and distant once again… Sherlock felt strange, seeing him like that after the emotions the man showed only moments ago. “It was more interesting with you, since you see a lot more than ordinary people and as a result I had try harder than ever so that you wouldn’t notice something I didn’t want to show. It appears I haven’t been successful, especially lately.” He paused for a moment and put the cuff link on the bedside table, next to the empty cups. “But at the beginning you fell for _Jim from It_ and the _psycho genius_ on the swimming pool.”

“I fell for them for they’re both part of the real you” he said and Jim smiled weirdly.

“In a way you even fell for Richard Brook and for a short moment, when we met at that idiot Riley’s flat, I saw doubt in your eyes, as if you were wondering if you weren’t really going crazy…”

“A _really_ short moment.”

“Yes. But still, it was more than I had expected. Funny thing… John believed in you more than you believed in yourself. You were looking for conspiracy theories and madness while he… how should I put it? His heart told him the truth. He _felt_ instead of _look_ and you _thought_ instead of _see_. Every time we played a game you were analyzing everything, dissecting all the cases piece by piece and then you were examining and measuring all the pieces. You were a master when it came to looking to the past and searching evidence but I was a master of planning and creating things which had never existed before. That’s why we had such fun together, even if some parts of our games you didn’t like” he said and, smiling weirdly, tapped a fragment of the song, which he used during their first game, fooling him it was a secret code. “Our fake suicides didn’t really amuse you but I’ve already confessed what my reasons were and I guess I’m forgiven. Regardless that part of our common history… you were always fascinated that I… was _synthesizing_ everything for you. I was creating all the cases bit by bit, planning every single brick and I was able to predict what you would deduce when you would be taking my cases apart, uncovering successive layers. I predicted what you’d… analyze. Synthesis and analysis. I’m a master of the future and I know all the possible alternatives concerning things which haven’t yet happened while you…”

“While I’m able to discover and understand everything which has already been done.”

“But…?” he lilted, clearly amazed but the turn of their conversation which made Sherlock realize he wasn’t the only one who had precise plans for their meeting.

“But I’m helpless when there’s a need to predict future possibilities and that’s why three years ago I needed Mycroft.”

“Great, Sherlock.”

“You seem to forget that the past affects the future, not the other way. I can draw conclusions from the past and see what effects it causes in the present and what could...”

“The present doesn’t mean anything since it only lasts a second. What good is the present if you don’t know what will happen in a minute, if you only know the present results but you can’t forecast anything without enough data from the past?”

“I have influence on what will happen in a minute.”

“But you don’t have influence on me” he said and Sherlock raised his eyebrows since that sentence was probably the biggest lie Jim ever said to him. “You can control your doings and probably ordinary people’s too but me…”

“Do you _really_ think I don’t have influence on you?” Sherlock interrupted.

“You don’t know the whole truth about me because I can use my masks perfectly and I’m able to show you those which are so prominent that they distract you from what’s important. I admit you see _a lot_ , but you only know my extremes and that’s why you come to the wrong conclusions about me.”

“Tell me, and please, be honest with me. Do you really think…” he reached out and caressed Jim’s cheek, which made the man freeze “…that you can hide the truth from me and I don’t have any influence on you?” he asked, a bit amused by the statement about him seeing only extremes and not realising there was something more underneath them. Of course, it was exactly like that for a long time but lately a lot changed. “As long as I have influence on you, I have influence on the future you’re creating as well. Yes, you still may be better when it comes to the future, but about _here and now_ , I win.”

“How is that?”

“I can kiss you any moment. And than you’ll unconsciously reveal the real you once again since that’s what influence I have on you” he said and Jim looked aside but… even though he was defeated in a way, he was smiling. “I’ll do that again if you promise you won’t wear masks when we meet since… they got kind of tiresome.” He moved his fingers lower, on Jim’s neck and cherished his rapid pulse for a moment. “I promise the next time I’ll be a good boy” he added and Jim laughed but gently shoved his hand away.

“How will you know I won’t show you another mask?”

“Because even if I don’t know the whole truth I can see a lie. And you won’t risk…” he leaned towards Jim and took his hand when the man halfheartedly tried to stop him “not being kissed by me again. And I really won’t if I see you cheating.”

“You know more than anyone else in the whole world, isn’t that enough? People have been killed for discovering my secrets. And besides, I would lose my best leverage in this game if I showed you _everything_.”

“That’s our game and no-one else’s and there’s nothing stopping us from changing the rules and play with aces only. None of us will lose if our cards are just as good.”

“Boring…”

“Really?” Sherlock moved even closer to Jim and his face was now an inch from his neck. “You won’t know if you don’t try. You won’t create anything if you don’t change _the present_ ” he said, slowly slid the stand-up collar down and started staring at the scar on Jim’s neck with fascination. “Who did it? I don’t mean the cut but the… stitches…” He caressed the thickness with his fingertips. “It bled a lot and you were getting weaker and weaker and you knew that even though you had been released you still weren’t safe and you might be killed by something as prosaic as blood loss. You ordered someone to stop the bleeding and stitch up the wound. It wasn’t a doctor but whoever it was they weren’t thrilled by injuries and had basic medical knowledge and some practice too… but weren’t suited to play a nurse. Here…” he touched the characteristic fragment of the scar “they tore your skin with the needle after you started _screaming from pain_. When he… that was a man, of course… when he was taking care of you, you hated him for seeing you like that and to enjoy yourself you were thinking about the ways of killing him after it all would end. It was Moran, wasn’t it? You don’t need to say anything. You’re right, lately you haven’t been successful when you tried to put on your masks in front of me.”

“Enough. I didn’t ask for a deductions and you… you’ve changed the subject” he said and pulled away from Sherlock, waiting for him to come back to his place and only then he continued. “You state none of us need to lose. What do you mean? In _every_ game someone loses.”

“We can end the game and then there will neither losers nor winners. If you don’t like it, you will just tell me and we will… stop the experiment. However… I don’t think any of us would give up a chance to try playing differently than usual” he said and Jim smiled which was enough for Sherlock to believe he was up for it. “Try to look at it like that: our game is _bridge_ and we’re playing in pair, not against each other. Playing in pair means bidding and hints and then one of us lays their cards face up on the table and the other has to play against the rest of the world. We either win together or lose together.”

“So… you think you’ve been playing against Mycroft, John, the government, the police and my criminal web at the same time. Interesting.”

“In the previous game you were the one who dealt the cards but I was the one who opened the auction and I did so texting you after seeing you on the TV screens. You gave me hints… _bids_ , and tricked me into being a declarer, you laid your cards on the table and watched me trying to play with them. You bid too risky because that’s the way you always play and that’s why from all the people you could have kidnap you chose a policewoman, that’s why you made a show of your coming back and that’s why you dropped off the corpses with X’s even though you knew I wouldn’t be the only one who would recognize it as your signature” he paused, when Jim smiled devilishly at the mention of that. “Now it will be the other way” he continued, trying not to think too much about that situation where _people died_. However they had worked for Magnussen, they weren’t to blame for the man’s doings. John would be proud of his empathy… if he ever learnt about it. “The cards were dealt by someone else, we exchange the information over the table and now I’m about to lay my cards on the table. You might be surprised by what you will see and you might even think it’s a losing game but I promise to get up and stand right behind you, support you and bring you drinks and snacks and watch how you deal with what he have bid.”

“I guess you play big even though your cards aren’t that good” Jim said with doubt but it was clear he was intrigued by Sherlock’s vision.

“You did it as well” he pointed out, amused. “The higher the stakes, the better game.”

“And more to lose.”

“Do you feel like you’re losing now?”

“No, but I haven’t yet seen your cards. What would happen if I lose?”

“If _we_ lose” Sherlock corrected him. “If we lose, everything will fall apart, we will hate each other once again and in the worst scenario, if someone uses the fact we played _too big_ …” he paused, imagining Mycroft, furious and panicked… and then cold and emotionless. “Then we will both be sentenced to many years imprisonment. You - for everything you’ve ever done, me – for a treason, hiding a criminal and killing Magnussen.”

“So what’s to win? It must be a lot if you’re ready to risk like that. Prisons are terrible, terrible places.”

“Everything else” Sherlock said, brushing Jim’s palm with his fingers. “Everything you can imagine.”

“I’ve got a vivid imagination.”

“Me too.”

“Right” he said and took Sherlock’s hand, when he tried to touch his scarred wrist. “So… how is our game going to look like?”

“Don’t you see? You’ve said I missed the beginning of our second game but it seems you did exactly the same thing.”

“Oh really? So when your game has started?”

“When the time comes I’ll let you know.”

“I have justified concern about it since, as we agreed, you can’t build scenarios and plan the future and I don’t see you…”

“I don’t need to. Everything which was going to happen, has already happened” he said and Jim frowned.

“So where’s the game if nothing will happen?”

“Remember you’re good in the future and I’m good in the past. I wouldn’t attempt to arrange something big without Mycroft’s help and I can assure you he has nothing to do with this.”

“So what…” he paused, realizing what Sherlock meant. “You really aren’t going to start anything new. You plan to _play in deductions_ … whatever that’s suppose to mean.”

“That’s it. What more comes to your mind?”

“You’re going to use only the past…? It doesn’t make sense.”

“It does and you’ll realize it when the next round starts.”

“The next…?” he asked, surprised and his fingers clenched tighter on Sherlock’s wrist.

“We can consider this meeting the first round.”

“Oh…” he sighed and looked at him flirtatiously. “I guess we’ve won.”

“We played quite low. I’d say we contracted three no trump and took ten tricks.”

“You know, I think it wasn’t _no trump_ but _hearts_ ” Jim said with a sparkle in his eyes and Sherlock laughed hearing that obvious suggestion.

“If we played hearts from the start we would make a big slam” he stated and even though Jim seemed resistant when it came to more physical closeness, Sherlock took his free hand pulled the man towards him. “Such a shame I didn’t know how many hearts you’ve got.”

“I was afraid to show them… there were a lot but only spots” he said and suddenly he laughed loudly; then, after a moment of hesitation, he loosened up and let Sherlock move closer to him. “Oh Sherly, that’s surely the weirdest flirt I’ve ever had.”

“Is flirting with card suits that untypical?”

“There’s nothing typical in you so if it’s you who does it… I guess the untypical things are _typical of you_ and I should expect them” he said and started watching his face closely. “Sherly, Sherly… something has changed. What has changed since our last meeting?” he asked mockingly. “You were so cold on Barts rooftop and suddenly…” he glanced at their joined hands “you aren’t resistant anymore. If I didn’t know how irresistible I am I would suspect you’ve got talents in Irene Adler’s style, I might even think you’re trying to hook up with me for your own reasons… but I know that’s not it. What’s that, Sherly? What that means?”

“You know what it is.”

“But I’d like to hear it from you.”

“I’ve already told you in every message I sent.”

“Well, yes, yes…” he said quietly. “I haven’t deleted them and I’ve even memorized my favorites.”

“Favorites?”

“Ok, all of them” he laughed, rolling his eyes. “Do you remember the one where you promised you’d give me something when I came?”

“I promised you’d get something if you came before Friday.”

“Now you make me sad. Won’t you let me choose something from here? I like souvenirs.”

“Keeping Carl Powers’ shoes for twenty years is a proof enough. All right. You can take anything you want before you leave.”

“That’s wonderful since I’ve got something for you too” he said with a broad smile and reached into his pocket to take out a small flash drive. “Our songs. And some others too. And… you know, there’s one more I’d like to give you. Shall I?” he pointed their phones on the bedside table and when Sherlock nodded, he freed his hand and took both mobiles. He turned his own so that Sherlock couldn’t see the screen and turned on the Bluetooth to send a file. “Listen to it when I leave” he asked and tried to hide his phone in his pocket but Sherlock stopped him.

“I’d like to see it” he said. Jim sighed, looking down, but turned the phone over so that Sherlock could see the wallpaper. “Oh… so that’s what you wanted my shirtless photo for…”

“Such a shame it’s a low quality. Otherwise I’d wallpaper my whole flat with this picture” he admitted and giggled; a moment later he quickly hid the phone, as if he was embarrassed by his confession. “So…” he started hesitantly “when is it going to start? How will I know it? Will you give me some hints? How long the preparations will take?”

“Just come here when you are ready. I’m not good at planning which we both know and that’s why my game doesn’t require any preparations.”

“What are we really playing at…?”

“ _The past_ ” Sherlock said after a moment, deciding that’s the best and the most adequate answer he could give.

“Right. You can’t create anything so you use what’s already created.”

“And you’ve already done what I needed you to.”

“You know? I don’t understand the rules at all and it’s seems my imagination is not as vivid as I thought.”

“You’ll understand everything when you come.”

“I want a hint so that I know what to expect. I gave you hints!” he said in a sulking voice.

“All right” Sherlock answered and considered what more he could tell Jim for a moment. “You told me once that new lovers want to know everything about each other. That’s the hint.”

“It sucks. I want something more.”

“Ok. Today I… a few times I misled you. Or rather I let you believe in something which is not true. I’m not telling you what it was but that’s what the second round will be about.”

“If I leave the room now and come back after five minutes, will it count as our next meeting so that the second round will start now and you’ll tell me?” he asked and Sherlock looked at him as if he was crazy. “Ok, ok. I’ll come here… around the weekend. I’ve got some things to do and… no, no-one will get killed and nothing will be blown up, I’ve already promised! The job of the consulting criminal is something more than bombs and corpses.”

“Should I expect some new cases from you in the following days?”

“I doubt it” he said after a moment. “Now I work mostly… at a distance. It’ll be better if our paths don’t cross. The conflicts of interest in job could have terrible impact on a relationship” he said, winking at Sherlock. “You can go back to your friends from the police, take the John-wannabe with you and start taking _the ordinary cases_ again. Or have a few days off, if you want to. You know, there’s a tradition to visit a young parents with a gift for their new-born. _Janine”_ he explained, before Sherlock manage to ask. “She sent me hundreds of photos of this child. She must have thought that’s funny” he said sarcastically. “If you go to visit them, say hello to Mary and… well, make sure John doesn’t hear it.”

“I’m not going to visit them soon.”

“You really should. Just drop by, give them some trashy trinket, wish them luck and get out” he said, sounding a bit like he was giving Sherlock an order, not an advice. “It will be suspicious if you don’t come to your friend to congratulate him his bedroom’s activities result of which is a child.”

“John and Mary know me. It would be more suspicious if I _did_ that.” He shrugged, when Jim looked at him critically, clearly not believing him.

“Well… in that case to whatever you think is best” he finally said, took a deep breath, reluctantly straightened up and put his feet down on the floor. “It hurts to say it but I’ve got to go. Duty calls.”

“You’ve got only an hour for me?” Sherlock said with reproach. “The next time you come, keep your whole evening free.”

“I’ll try.”

“Are you going to leave my place dressed like that?” he asked pushing the duvet aside; he felt Jim’s stare at his half-naked body and immediately started looking for something to cover himself.

“I’ll use the other flat and…”

“Mrs. Hudson has already got up and she’d better not see you” he said, put on a dressing gown he picked up from the floor and started clumsily untangling from the sheets. Jim was watching his struggles with amusement but didn’t comment on it. Then they both got up from bed and stood on the opposite sides of it, suddenly not knowing how to behave when the moment of saying goodbye came. “Come. I’ll… get you something to dress” Sherlock finally said and moved towards the wardrobe, where he kept his outfits. He opened the door widely, showing the shelves full of clothes; from the highest of them fell off a torn jacket which Jim caught before it landed on the floor, raising his eyebrows at the sight of odd stains on the fabric.

“That one I surely won’t put on” he stated and, not knowing what to do with the jacket, pushed in between the other clothes on the nearest shelve. He started looking through the contents of the wardrobe, unaware that Sherlock was watching him closely. He was taking up and putting back different clothes for a few minutes and finally he found an old, brown, leather coat; it was a bit too big for him and tightening the belt didn’t help much but he was smaller than Sherlock so none of his clothes would fit well anyway. Looking for accessories took him less time for he soon noticed a wool tan on the highest shelve; he stood up on his toes but still couldn’t reach it so the detective did it for him without a word.

For a few minutes Jim was searching his wardrobe, Sherlock was looking at his small frame and now, when he wasn’t able to reach something and a moment later – was clumsily trying on an old fashioned tan, it struck him how much that _clumsiness_ affected him. Jim peeked at the wardrobe again and when he turned over and opened his mouth to say something, Sherlock grabbed his shoulders and leaned down to kiss him. This time he didn’t allow himself to lengthen the caress since only after a second he felt as if his legs were melting and he was pretty sure he would have problems to stop and besides… he knew that Jim was right and actually he wasn’t ready for something more yet.

“I guess I should keep these terrible clothes if you like them on me so much” Jim joked.

“Are you going to steal my clothes as a souvenirs?” Sherlock asked and, to keep his shaking hands occupied, reached in the wardrobe and pulled out a long scarf.  

“Sherly, Sherly…” he giggled “it was even more ambiguous than the words about _what you are doing alone thinking about me_.”

“Oh really…?” he asked with a fake innocence and started tying the scarf on Jim’s neck, trying to look at his own hands not the man’s face.

“Sherlock…” Jim started and cleared his throat. “When you see Mycroft, ask him if he… if is interested in _KAPPA project_. You don’t need to explain anything for he knows pretty well what it is, just mention that the Russians are so interested that they already made an offer which is worth considering.”

“Are you…”

“Just pass the word to him. And listen to the song I’ve sent you” he said in a smooth voice and made an odd gesture, as if he wanted to do something but wasn’t sure if he should. Sherlock looked down, not knowing what to do as well and when a moment later Jim moved towards him and kissed his cheek lightly, he felt like taking him in his arms and telling him to stay.

He didn’t say a word.

“See you soon” Jim said and, not waiting for an answer, turned around and left the bedroom, no trying to make saying goodbye even longer and harder for both of them.

Sherlock didn’t move until he heard the apartment door closing and for a few minutes he was so numb and emotionally drained he was unable to do anything. Their conversation, touches and kisses merged into a colorful, overwhelming memory, which he couldn’t yet close in his mind palace and get over it… he let himself melt into it and relive their meeting in his thoughts – every second, every look and gesture… every word and every understatement.

He listened the song Jim left on his phone on repeat until he memorized the melody and lyrics. Then, with no hesitation, he added them to a new room in his mind palace, one that he created just for their one-hour meeting.

_All I want to get is a little bit closer, all I want to know is, can you come a little closer…_

_So let's make things physical, I won't treat you like you're oh so typical._

***

 


	19. Dawson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long (again)... Last few weeks has been quite busy for me since my only sister's getting married this Saturday ;) I hope I'll have more free time soon.

***

Bill appeared on Baker Street in the afternoon, when Sherlock recovered after Jim’s visit, analyzed it and memorized every single word, look and touch. Only then he stopped the song on his phone and turned on the music from the flash drive he was given – and that he had been listening to until his friend came. At the beginning the man didn’t try to question him, even though he must have realized that something had happened in the morning, since he was glancing at Sherlock every once in awhile, opening his mouth as if he wanted to ask something and changing his mind before he had the courage to do so.

“So… are we going to go on with the recordings?” he finally asked and Sherlock nodded thoughtlessly, not even taking his eyes off the computer screen. “Ok, what are you doing?”

“Analyzing the song lyrics” he answered calmly as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And in the meantime, mailing my clients.”

“For what?”

“I’ve got a lot of e-mails and…”

“What are you analyzing the lyrics for?” Bill clarified.

“Since they are _hints_. Fascinating…” he sighed, scrolled wikipedia page and stopped on one of the most interesting parts.

“I would’ve never thought you’re a fan of 70’s disco” Bill laughed, standing behind him and peeking at the screen. “Oh, you even have it saved on your hard disc?” he asked pointing the music player. “You should watch the Eurovision version, it was just incredible.”

“Watch _what_?”

“Actually… well, never mind” Bill said, sitting next to him. “And what have you analyzed?”

“I try to understand why would anyone write a song about a historical chieftain.”

“Oh god, that’s not about any chieftain but about love” the man giggled and Sherlock finally took his eyes off the screen, realizing that his friend might help him more than the historical articles. In the meantime, the song ended and the next one started playing. “You know, a chick is singing that this dude is like the Waterloo battle and she lost it since she fell in love with him even though she didn’t want to but in the end that’s rather their common victory since they are destined to each other and she’s got nothing against surrender when it means to be with him… or something like that. Waterloo is only a metaphor.”

“Oh…” Sherlock murmured and closed all the tabs on the browser, embarrassed that Bill could figure it out so quickly while he didn’t come to any conclusions even though he had already listened to the song thrice.

“Are you going to tell me why you are doing… what you are doing?”

“I was given a few songs and I need to know what they mean.”

“ _You’re my heart, you’re my soul,_ I hope that one doesn’t need explanation” the man laughed and Sherlock looked at him angrily. “Ok, ok, I’ll shut up. It’s from him, isn’t it?”

“That’s rather obvious.”

“He’s sent you songs with love confessions? Dear lord, that guy is even weirder than I…” he stopped, seeing a flash drive decorated with tiny red crystals arranged in an “M” shape. “You’ve met and that’s when he gave you that…?”

“He left few hours ago. We talked and cleared some things up. Oh, I lent him the leather coat you liked.”

“Ha! So he stayed for a night!” Bill stated smirking, clearly amused by Sherlock’s confession.

“He came in the morning and left… in the morning too” he murmured and decided to change the subject to stop the embarrassing insinuations. “He knew I went to Ireland and visited Rose” he said and Bill stared at him in shock.

“You’ve told him what we’re doing and you’re still alive…?”

“He thinks I’m investigating his criminal activities, not his past… but I’m going to tell him the truth soon” he said and looked aside when Bill started staring at him as if he was crazy.

“Shezza, flirts and affairs are one thing but getting close to this twisted psycho is something a lot more serious…! I know you wanted to learn everything about him but I thought… well… that it will stay secret and that in the end…”

“I want to seduce and destroy him? I’m not Irene Adler” he said with irritation. “And I’m surely not going to do what my brother wants me to.”

“Do you realize that when he learns what we’ve discovered, you know… about the abuse and rapes and killing his mother and half of the family… he might say something _like Yeah, Sherly, that’s my story, you know everything, I’m sick psycho with DID, can we go to bed now?_ ”

“I suppose he doesn’t have DID after all” Sherlock said and Bill sighed heavily.

“But the rest…”

“Everything will be alright. I know how to play with him” he stated, looking down at the keyboard. “I know enough to be sure I can handle him.”

“You may know a lot _about him_ but you don’t know _him._ We both know he’s a master of disguise and that he covers his real face and you can’t even be sure if he is honest when he flirts with you…!”

“When he does so he _is_ honest.”

“How…”

“I just know it and that’s it” he snapped. “We really _talked a lot_ and however he tried to mask himself at some point he…” Sherlock fell silent, trying to decide how to pass the information to Bill and not be considered a naïve fool, blinded by love. “I asked him straight. Jim realizes his personality consists of different layers and even though he usually controls his personas and uses them consciously sometimes he fails. These masks…” he paused. “Sometimes they appear automatically. And, step by step, I learn which incentives cause it… when he turns into Jim from IT, when into Moriarty and when he… when he tries to get rid of them and show me his real face.”

“I’m all ears. You won’t convince me until you explain it to me” he stated and Sherlock sighed, leaning back in the chair and staring at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure if telling Bill about his conclusions was good idea but on the other side… the man could give him a new perspective, looking at all of this from a distance. And besides – he wasn’t like Mycroft and from all the people who knew about him and Jim, he was probably the most proper person to confess to.

“He becomes Jim from IT when I don’t like his behaviour or statements and when he wants to convince me to… tell him something” he said, deciding he would tell Bill everything he had deduced until now except of all the… intimate details. “Or to _do_ something. He becomes Moriarty when he is furious, terrified or hurt since it’s his defensive mechanism to strong emotions he can’t deal with.”

“Ok, I get it and it even seems reasonable. But it’s also a proof that _usually_ he calculates everything, is dangerous and it may be a part of a bigger plan to destroy you. So… tell me when he becomes… normal.”

“When I manage to get him interested and focused and when he’s not afraid I’m a threat to him” Sherlock answered immediately. “At the beginning, in that kind of moments, he was becoming an amused, weird jester, which I haven’t really… identified and named yet and…” he paused, when a new idea came to his mind and only when Bill cleared his throat he came back to a reality.

“You’ve told me he was becoming a jester but I asked about him being himself.”

“Yes… at the beginning…” Sherlock murmured, almost sure that the new idea might have been more important than all the other conclusions he told Bill about. “He was always becoming a jester in that kind of moments but a few days ago, on Barts rooftop, there was something else and today, when he wasn’t afraid about our doings anymore and at the same time he knew I don’t like his psychological games he started… he just became a mix of it all. His different personas was uniting every time I get him interested. I’ve told him that I don’t like him lying and covering his true self and it seemed to work.”

“All right but even though it sounds logical, if I were you I would be more sceptical and wouldn’t hope I saw his _true self_. What more?” he asked, gazing at Sherlock and lightly nudged his shoulder. “I know there’s something more you want to tell me. He gets normal since he cares what you think about him and he knows you don’t like when he pretends to be someone whom he is not, ok, I get it. But there’s something else, isn’t it?”

“Actually… yes, it is” he said hesitantly, remembering the most memorable moment of their meeting. “But it doesn’t matter since at the first time he tried to pretend it didn’t affect him and even though he failed, he wanted to hide the truth from me and my goal is to stop him from doing so.”

“At the first… what?” Bill asked and when the realisation hit him he laughed loudly. “Oh my god, you had sex and you did it more than once!”

“We only kissed!” he snorted raising his voice. “You’ll never stop asking about the sex, will you? You, Irene and Mycroft. As if relationships were all about the sex!”

“They often are and none of us suspected Moriarty of having any deeper feelings while you…” he paused “most of people doesn’t see you as someone prone to emotions and Janine’s interviews only added fuel to the fire” he said, smirking. “So… you _only kissed_ and he gave you a hundred love songs. Do you even realise how romantic it is?”

“I’ve been said to be deprived of any feelings and a heart whatsoever.”

“I’ve said most of people, not _all of them._ I know you better than most of people and you know what? If you really were a heartless machine, I wouldn’t feel like working with you.”

“Oh, really? So who do you think I am?”

“I suppose you’re just like Moriarty, but more sane and less murderous” he said, pulling away from Sherlock, as if he thought he would get a punch for these words. “I’m sorry. You were the one who suggested you two were similar when you were telling me about your meeting after the trial…”

“Comparing me to him isn’t something to apologize for. Just leave it, you already know enough. There’s something more important which has just come into my mind.”

“The jester?”

“Yes, the jester” Sherlock answered. “At the beginning I just thought that’s a part of _Moriarty-the-criminal_ persona but the longer I think about it the more I’m convinced I was wrong. _Moriarty_ is connected with trauma and strong, negative emotions, especially fear and anger, while Jim… starts fooling around, sometimes joking in a confusing way when he’s rather relaxed. Of course, then he tries to hide something as well since when you’re joking all the time nobody really knows what’s true and what’s only another joke. He doesn’t become a jester when negative emotions overwhelm him but when he _just feels something_ but tries to underestimate it and make people believe he’s never serious and that the whole life is just a joke for him. But… just remember everything we’ve learnt about him from people who knew him when he was younger: he was a genius, a loner and weirdo, he was scaring people or was completely invisible and that… Joyce…? She couldn’t believe he is actually an extrovert. Don’t you see something is… missing?

“No-one who knew him as a child or teenager would call him _funny_ , if you believe Mrs Patton and Joyce. That’s… amazing. The jester mask couldn’t appear in Clane or Brighton, that’s obvious but…”

“Somehow I don’t think it’s connected to his high school in Dublin since he was using the name Patton, which he got rid of as an adult.”

“Why do you think so? I guess he finished high school and university as James Patton and…”

“Jim is really sentimental” Sherlock interrupted. “Don’t you see? He used his real first name creating a new identity at least thrice: James Patton, Dawson, _Moriarty_. The only exception is Richard Brook but once I explained to you what it meant. Jim wouldn’t use the name of the family he hated so much to create a persona of someone who loves joking and fooling around. I’m absolutely sure that when he was Patton in high school, he was… cold, distant, emotionless and… I don’t know, dominant? Some kind of a school leader. He was invisible and weak as Hawkins since he didn’t want to expose his close ones to danger, he didn’t want to cause problems and make people remember him and the name Hawkins itself. However, he posed as Patton in a big city when no-one knew his past, the neighbors weren’t staring at him, there weren’t elder cousins who abused him nor the crazy mother… after all the years he pretended to be weak he could finally _pretend to be strong_. But he surely wasn’t pretending _a jester_.”

“Well… that sounds probable but I still think that in the university…”

“No” Sherlock said, exasperated by Bill’s stubbornness. “He chose the university in a different place and assumed a new name… he might have even changed his first name as well. There, he met new people and presented a new face and…” he paused, realizing something. “You remember what Mrs Butler said, don’t you? In 2009 she met him and Janine. He was thirty and he worked in some university but that’s quite young age for a professor and we can assume that – we’ll verify it in a moment – that he worked in the same place where he studied. On the other hand, if he posed as a jester being a student, getting a job in the same university might have been a problem since even as a genius he wouldn’t have the best reputation and I don’t really think they’d like to hire him.”

“So… what do you think?”

“He wasn’t studying in Ireland and he probably chose some university in Great Britain where it’s easy to hide. A big city or an place in the middle of nowhere. The former, I suppose, since it was in the late ‘90s and Internet still wasn’t that common.”

“What that has to do with this?”

“Being connected to the rest of the world? Everything. I heard from a reliable source that in 2002 he already had a criminal web in Europe. He had to live in a place which was well communicated to the rest of… oh…”

“He might have studied beside Great Britain” Bill finished for him. “And in that case we’ve got no chance to find that place. Assuming he was studying at all and really was a lecturer since it may be a lie.”

“It surely is not” Sherlock stated immediately and when his friend looked at him doubtfully, he rolled his eyes and quickly explained it. “Jim values the knowledge and intelligence too much to pretend he has a degree which he actually didn’t get legitimately.”

“Ok, let’s assume he got a degree but how can you be sure he was really a lecturer? He and Janine might have lied to Mrs Butler about it for his own purpose.”

“I don’t think so, his personas were created too carefully for that kind of mistake. I’d rather say Janine got a big mouth like she always had and it just slipped out. _Richard Brook_. Do you know he really recorded all those fairytales and released them on DVD? He had a website for months and spent a lot of time to make this persona believable. I’m sure he studied and got a degree since schools and universities are the places where we get the chance to meet dozens of totally different people. Besides…” he paused, frowning. “I’ve got a feeling that a scientific career was something to fall back on for him if he ever decided to abandon his criminal web. His father was a mathematician after all and he worked as a lecturer his whole life so Jim knew something about it and it might have appealed to him. I think…” he smiled broadly “that today we won’t be listening to Corey’s recordings. You will be looking for McQueeney’s high school and...

“It won’t be that hard since Joyce sent me a list of the best school in Dublin.”

“Great. Take care of it and I go back to Henry Hawkins.”

“You believe he worked in the same place as Moriarty?”

“I’m almost sure he did. There’s more: I’m sure Moriarty was using different name back then so that no-one in there knew he and Henry were related. Henry surely didn’t know what was his son's true profession but he must have suspected he was leading a double life and probably was helping him with hiding the fact from the university staff. Remember that Henry and Aisha knew there was a part of Jim they had never reached to, that there’s something dark and dangerous in him but… they still loved him and supported him no matter what. Even if Henry figured out that Jim was doing something illegal, he would turn a blind eye on it, he would be on his side and wouldn’t treat him differently because of it.”

“They might have even worked together at some point…”

“And I was really close to it when I was looking for information concerning Jim’s father. _Publications_. I’ve got to find every single thesis Henry has ever written with someone.”

“And check the co-authors” Bill said and Sherlock nodded, pushing one of the laptops towards Bill.

“Let’s get it on.”

***

The first results of their research came after three hours, when Sherlock found a thirty-pages article co-written by Henry Hawkins; the subject was discrete mathematics which wasn’t his specialty. Even though Sherlock wasn’t a pro, his knowledge of mathematics was far beyond average and he quickly realized that the way of expressing the issue wasn’t like in Henry’s other works. The style was also different, it was somehow more… smooth and the author had nothing against digressions and even small, scientific jokes which most of people wouldn’t understand. He didn’t dig into details, since it wasn’t the case – the article was written seven years ago and it couldn’t contain any hints from Moriarty – and after scrolling the whole thesis he started researching its three co-writers besides Henry Hawkins.

First of the co-authors was a seventy year old professor from Scotland, the second a woman in Henry’s age which also lived in the north of the country – Sherlock checked them both and it was clear none of them was a fake persona and he only researched them to be sure they’re real scientists. And the third one… the name spoke for itself. _Jamie Dawson_.

“Bill, look at that” he said, pointing the computer screen.

“Wait a minute, isn’t it the name of that IT guy from Barts…?”

“Yes it is. Popular, common name, like every single name Jim has taken… the only exception is _Moriarty_ which is quite rare. The first name, _Jamie_ , is similar to his real one… and he must have told the other workers and Molly as well that he preferred to be called _Jim_ and no-one thought it was odd. I made a mistake years ago when I was looking for a guy called _James Dawson_ and, of course, I didn’t find anyone suspicious since _Jim’s from IT_ true name was different than I presumed.”

“So what are you waiting for?”

“If I’m right about the _alternative life_ Jim was living as a lecturer… actually I know everything” Sherlock said and after a moment he withdrew his hands from the laptop. Yes, it could be the connection between Jim’s childhood and his current life and there were only few puzzles left to find. Piece by piece he could find the missing ones and taking the progress of their investigation into account, it wouldn’t take more than a month. If Bill went to Ireland, he would find Jim’s high school and someone willing to talk as well; if he continued investigating Jamie Dawson’s persona, he would learn in which university he worked and then he would be able to go there and meet students and professors who knew Jim as a lecturer… finally, he would made a trip to Scotland to find Aisha and Henry since he was almost sure that finding their address was within his reach…

However a few weeks ago he didn’t suppose he would ever get this far, it appeared that one tiny hint – the fact Jim and Janine were related – became a key to an untypical lock which no skeleton key could unlock. And he, after getting into the secret palace which Jim’s past was, after exploring so many corridors and rooms, stood at the front of the door to the main chamber, from which he could get everywhere. He was almost touching the doorknob but he could still back off and chose a different corridor and do some… sightseeing without a map, before coming back here. That kind of trip would be just more interesting and seemed more fair too. He just knew that it wasn’t the time to open the _Jamie Dawson chamber_ yet.

“That’s what you wanted, right?” Bill asked with suspicion.

“I… yes I did but…” he paused. “I need a cigarette. I…” he took a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from the windowsill and lit one nervously. “You’d better tell me what you’ve found out about McQueeney.”

“Nothing. Till now I’ve only hacked servers of two high schools and...”

“Send me half of the remaining ones.”

“Aren’t you going to investigate Dawson…?”

“I am, but only after finding McQueeney.”

“Why?” Bill asked, clearly surprised by his decision.

“Chronology” he said and then fell completely silent, even though his friend tried to resume the conversation a few times; having smoked three cigarettes he typed the name of the first high-school Bill had listed and started working, still not saying a word.

They spent the next few hours in silence, not really achieving anything. Sherlock was hacking high schools’ servers, checking the files and students lists and looking for any familiar name. He knew how far they got and that Jamie Dawson wasn’t a false trail, he just felt it; even if it wasn’t that important, that was surely the name Jim used as an adult, when he burnt all the bridges connecting him with his childhood. That was what he was doing his all life: building a new persona, meeting people, using them for his own purpose, hiring the best individuals in his criminal web and abandoning all the rest as soon as he decided it was the time to change his name and disappear.

That made Sherlock realize that even though Jim was sentimental, he was able to burn all the bridges and to get rid of people which weren’t useful anymore – no matter if it was his old persona or ex-employee like McQueeney. Would he do the same with Sherlock if he got bored of him…?

And would he get rid of _Moriarty_ if he decided he didn’t want to be the Napoleon of crime anymore…?

Sherlock bit his lips nervously, stood up and without saying a word headed towards the kitchen, taking a pack of cigarettes with him. He put a kettle on and looked at the window, clenching his fingers on the mobile phone. He was staring at the spot where a week and a half ago he saw a _blue couple_ , which was a hint to a riddle which he didn’t solve and which caused blowing up the government car.

He remembered the song which lyrics Bill explained to him and which gained a new meaning, considering abandoning old personas. The historical chieftain might have meant Moriarty not Napoleon himself while a lost battle – which seemed to be a symbol of falling in love – a prelude to his end. To Napoleon, Waterloo had been the beginning of the end and shortly after that he disappeared forever but… the woman sang the _she felt like she won when she lost_ and that _giving up the fight was her only chance._ Did it mean Jim was going to give up too or that he already did…?

_I was defeated, you won the war… promise to love you forever more… couldn’t escape if I wanted to… knowing my fate is to be with you… finally facing my Waterloo._

He took a deep breath, wondering if coming to such conclusions wasn’t too much. Jim gave him more than a hundred songs and it was hard to believe that he should analyze like that all of them. Still… he took his phone and started typing a new message.

_Should I look for hidden meaning in Waterloo?_

_If you ask about it I guess you’ve already found one._

_Is that true?_

_It’s only a song, Sherly, which I had chosen before we met. Don’t treat everything like a riddle to solve._

_If you were setting a playlist now, would you choose that song?_

_Now, half of the playlist would be different. XXX_

Sherlock smiled after the last sentence, texted Jim three X’s, put the phone in his dressing gown pocket and prepared two cups of coffee which he took to the living room. Bill looked at him suspiciously, taking one of them but didn’t comment it. He saw – it was quite obvious – that Sherlock wasn’t as deep in thoughts as before and that he seemed more focused and calm which encouraged him to start a conversation.

“Did something happen?”

“Jim isn’t afraid about me beating him and destroying one of his personas anymore” Sherlock answered and Bill looked at him strangely, clearly not understanding what he meant. “Until now, he was. And that’s why he chose that song. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s get back to work.”

“I’ve got no idea what you are talking about. Shezza, are you even going to investigate Dawson…?”

“Not today. I don’t know if I ever will” he answered and Bill opened his mouth as if he was going to ask _why_ again, so Sherlock decided to continue. “I didn’t want to know what Carl Powers did to him and I don’t want to look for information about Dawson behind his back too. I know the most important thing: he used the name Dawson for years. That’s probably his _legal_ version and there’s a possibility he used it even when he appeared in the news. I can easily imagine he was joking with his friends he had as Dawson, that he looks surprisingly similar to the famous criminal. I wouldn’t be surprised if his parents believed it too for some time.”

“You were going to go to Scotland so you may…”

“Change of plans. If he feels like it…” he paused for a moment “he will take me there himself some day. I won’t mess with the alternative personalities which are so important to him.”

“Damn, Sherlock…” Bill mumbled and looked at him apologetically. “When you left to the kitchen I couldn’t resist looking for Dawson and I guess you really need to know something…” he said and pushed the laptop towards him. Even though Sherlock didn’t want to read anything about Jamie Dawson, the first thing he saw was a headline of a short note on the University of Sussex website; it was dated exactly the day after he and Jim met on Barts rooftop and faked suicide.

_We deeply regret to inform that yesterday our dear friend and colleague, Jamie Dawson, died tragically in a car accident while driving to London to scientific conference. We offer our deepest condolences to the family on the loss of their beloved brother and son._

“Look at the photo…” Bill said quietly and scrolled the page to show Sherlock a small, black and white, low quality picture; it was Jim for sure, even though he was much younger, has different hair – longer and layered – and a sincere smile, so rarely seen on his face. “The date… I… I managed to find the article about Owen Patton again. The one about causing an accident and… it seems three years ago Moriarty faked death of more than one of his personas.”

“Was it the same accident…?”

“No doubt. The date is the same, as well as the circumstances and place. When I told you about Owen’s accident, I muddled the dates since it didn’t happen _before_ your escape but _at the same time_. Moriarty must have doctored evidence to frame Patton and at the same time…”

“He didn’t need Jamie Dawson anymore. He killed two birds with one stone. That’s…” he groaned grabbing his head. “I’m an idiot. I was making up stupid theories of how Janine could learn about his death and what his parents knew… I thought that it was somehow connected to Magnussen since Jim told me that Janine had found out he was alive only recently and that she hadn’t known about his criminal past at all but I didn’t really believe him, whereas… for her and their parents Jim was Jamie Dawson and all three of them really though he died in a car accident. I knew he had to disappear back then but not that…”

“That he killed his legal persona as well.”

“He was really afraid of Magnussen. He was terrified when he realized what the man knew about him and what could be revealed and wanted to protect his close ones no matter what, so he had to get rid of the persona which was connected to them. If he hadn’t done it, Magnussen would have found them but…”

“But he read that Jamie Dawson died in an accident at the same time Moriarty was at Barts rooftop with you.”

“Remember about the fact that Jim had backup at Barts, people who knew perfectly well what to do with his unconscious body. Magnussen must have thought that Moriarty’s men - surely well-trained – had instructions what to do with his legal persona in case of his death; Jamie Dawson couldn’t just disappear since it wouldn’t go unnoticed. The second option is that Magnussen never learnt about Dawson and only had a general information concerning Hawkins family so that killing Jamie Dawson was a chance to cut their connection to Moriarty and protect them.”

“Quite lame protection, since Magnussen must have known that Henry and Aisha are Janine’s parents if he was blackmailing Moriarty using her…”

“Yes, but Magnussen didn’t know they were important to Jim as well. When he was blackmailing Jim, he was only using Janine, not all three of them. He might have thought that Jim wasn’t in touch with them anymore and that Janine knew about her brother’s criminal activities and his Moriarty-persona… but we know he was wrong since she thought he worked in the university and she only suspected he had some secrets which made him use a name different than Hawkins… but she didn’t stick her nose into it. And Magnussen…” he frowned, trying to come with any logical conclusion “whatever he told her about Jim, it couldn’t have been more than that her brother wasn’t only looking like the famous criminal who had gone missing. I suppose that’s how she learnt that Moriarty and Jim are the same person but back then it didn’t matter since both she and Magnussen thought they… _he_ was dead. Why did Magnussen do that? I guess he was blackmailing her and threatening to tell her parents or someone else the truth about Jim’s occupation.”

“Do you really think she didn’t recognize her own brother on TV?” Bill asked, clearly confused by Sherlock’s vogue explanations.

“Imagine that you see on TV… let’s say a politician, who looks alike your sibling or cousin but beside appearance nothing connects them and your relative is laughing at the fact that they resemble a celebrity. Would you have any reason not to believe them?”

“But when Moriarty appeared in the news, he was in custody and couldn’t have been able to…”

“Being in custody he was able to hack personalised TV in the hotel and blackmail the juries. I’m perfectly sure he could have called his parents as well and convince them that he was on holiday abroad and had no idea who Moriarty was.”

“Blackmailing the juries might have been his men doing…” he suggested and Sherlock looked at him with pity. “Or even Magnussen’s since they were working together back then, weren’t they?”

“Actually I suppose they only started their collaboration after Jim advertised himself in the court as _the only consulting criminal_ since that was the exact moment a lot of influential people learnt about his existence and started _craving_ for him to work for them. Magnussen might have got interested in him even though he rarely did business with criminals and even if he had heard the name Moriarty before he didn’t care about it till then. However…” Sherock got silent for a moment. “There were only two things Magnussen always wanted: power and money. And just imagine how much power he would have got if he manage to blackmail a Napoleon of crime who had a key to open every door _in a world of locked rooms_? Controlling Jim Moriarty would have been more efficient than controlling my brother.”

“But he failed and…”

“And there’s no point in considering it all” Sherlock said. “Just like there’s no point in investigating Dawson since we already know everything that is important.”

“I think it only causes more questions… but you’re the boss. So, what’s your plan?”

“We’re looking for McQueeney and then listening to the recordings. When I get the chance I’ll ask Mycroft for Owen Patton’s court records.”

“You really want to know what…”

“The thing I want to know most is what’s inside the heads of four living people: Jim, Janine and their parents.”

“And…?”

“I’ll talk to Janine at the earliest opportunity” he said, took and deep breath and pulled the laptop towards him.

***

“Shezza… something odd came to my mind” Bill said after long hours they spent trying to hack one of the school servers which was protected so well they couldn’t handle it. Sherlock tore his tired eyes from the screen, hoping his friend had something interesting to say. It was almost three a.m. o’clock, he was exhausted and had no strength for meaningless conversations. “Why did Moriarty work in Barts using the name Jamie Dawson? He wanted to get close to you and observe you, that’s clear, but doesn’t it seem suspicious to you that he used the identity which he had kept separated from his criminal activities ‘till then?”

“He knew I’d try to find connections and it was only my ignorance which made me target a man named James not Jamie” Sherlock said. “What’s your theory?”

“I’ve got none. It’s been bothering me for hours though. What’s yours?””

“I think at first he didn’t plan to meet me in Barts” he said after a moment, joining his hands on the table. “I only saw him once with Molly since he was invincible and didn’t draw my attention.”

“So you suppose he went after Molly to the lab you worked in by accident?”

“If it had been an accident he would have retreated and wouldn’t have given me his number. He did it on purpose but why did he pretended to be a shy, pathetic loser – that I will never understand. He couldn’t have thought I’d get interested in someone like…” he paused, frowning. “Well… back then I wouldn’t indeed, since a gay in a closet hitting on naïve women wasn’t someone who could get me interested. Especially since he seemed so… sloppy, insecure and completely ordinary.”

“I don’t know why but you sound like now you _would_ find a guy like that interesting.”

“I kind of _do_ when I know who Jim from IT really is. But still, why did he gave me his number pretending…” he frowned, realizing that Bill was smirking. “What?”

“Oh, Shezza… as far as I know you’ve got quite _socialized_ in the past few years but you still don’t know anything about romantic relationships. If someone gives you their number being nervous and lamely hit on you it usually means they like you and really want to hook up with you but the thought about being turned down may be so paralyzing for them they act stupid and clumsily. That’s what I’ve seen lots of times and I don’t think it is any different with gays.”

“But why… did he really think I would call seeing him like that? What would it…”

“Maybe he wanted to get closer to you and reveal who he is only then? No, that doesn’t seem possible” he said, laughing. “Maybe he wanted to date you but didn’t plan to ever reveal his true identity to you.”

“If I had paid any attention to him I would have noticed he was hiding something. Even if he is hard to read I would have found out the truth if I had known him better. Look, before he came back… how much time did I spend with him? Two hours? And most of that were quite stressful situations when solving a case or staying alive was more important than wondering who was hiding behind _Moriarty’s mask_. To be honest, before I met him in Janine’s house I had thought that _Moriarty-the-criminal_ is the closest thing to his real self and that Jim from IT was only a disguise…”

“But now you know that’s not quite true” Bill said. “Listen… the thing you told me about him before, you know, testing new faces and your reactions on them… maybe that was the first of his tests? He showed you Jim from IT and when you ignored him and looked at him pityingly like you look at me now, he decided to show you something completely different. He started his game as Moriarty and it worked since he finally got you attention. You were amazed by his genius and you chased him like crazy, so he went on and on until you met in the swimming pool…”

“…where he made fun of Jim from IT, because when he wants to hide his feelings he becomes a jester” Sherlock said quietly. “And when he realized he was losing he became furious and cold as ice, since he covers his strong feelings with _Moriarty-the-madman_ mask.  But above all he knew that even though I found him fascinating I cared about John a lot more. Back than he already knew that John was my pressure point and he was ready to kill him… he was ready to kill us all when he realized that his Moriarty persona disgusted me more than it fascinated me.”

“Well, that’s… pretty messed up” Bill murmured. “He was really obsessed by you. See how much he did just to catch your attention… can you imagine how much money and time he must have spent? And how angry and disappointed he must have been when he realized that it’s all for nothing since you still preferred your boring, ordinary doctor…? The thing I just can’t understand is why he wanted to give you a bad name and make people believe you’re a fraud and criminal. I don’t suppose it was only a revenge for rejecting him.”

“Maybe he wanted to take everything that kept me alive till then away from me” he said, closing his eyes. “He must have had a plan. Maybe it was him who started all the conspiracy theories about me joining him, even if today he stated he had never wanted me to work for him.”

“ _For him_? I always thought the theories was about you working _with_ him” Bill said with surprise and then Sherlock rapidly looked up at him. “Listen… he hasn’t really told you what he was planning yet. You only know that Magnussen’s doings fucked it up and made you both fake your suicides and… well, if you believe what he said in that chick’s house, it was going to be something special which you’d like.”

“I wouldn’t like to join him. Back then I wished him all the worst and I really wanted to defeat him. If I had let him recruit me I would have destroyed his web from the inside and he knew that.”

“And what if he had promised to abandon his life as a criminal on condition that you gave him a chance? I know it may sound stupid but…”

“It sounds _really_ stupid” Sherlock said. “Have you got any other ideas?”

“I’m not in Moriarty’s head and have no idea what that man is capable of doing but if your relationship is as close as you say, just ask him about it” he answered, a bit offended.

“No” Sherlock snapped with irritation, taking the last cigarette from the pack. “He told me it doesn’t matter anymore and that’s the end of it. The idea of him testing his different masks on me is the best you’ve come up with today but abandoning the Moriarty persona…” he paused, aware of the fact he had thought about the same thing. “I wouldn’t like getting rid of _Moriarty_ , so he won’t do that.”

“But you wanted him normal and Moriarty persona is apparently his defense mechanism to…”

“Normal for me and with me. Not for the rest of the world” he answered calmly, staring at the cigarette. “I only need him to abandon some of the activities which might interest Mycroft and the police too much. If he isn’t the criminal consultant anymore it just won’t be the same.”

“I thought you hate this mask…”

“I do but it’s a part of him and Jim… fascinates me as a whole. If I cared only about the parts I like I wouldn’t dig into his past. That's all we are, the sum of our experiences.”

“But there’s a part of his experience you don’t plan to dig into.”

“Because, as I’ve already told you, there’s a part I want him to tell me about himself” he answered with a voice which indicated that further conversation about it was pointless. Bill sighed, pushed the laptop aside and stretched his back, tense after long hours spent on the computer.

“All right. Let’s get back to McQueeney.”

“I think the school we’ve got problem with hacking into is the one we’re looking for” Sherlock said. “It’s impossible that it’s protected so well for no reason. Tomorrow we’ll check the rest of the schools and if we find nothing we’ll be sure it’s the right one. And than you’ll go to Ireland, meet with that woman and break into that school’s archive.”

“You’re still not going to go there with me?”

“No. I have things to do in London.”

“What things? You can continue the internet searching from anywhere and…”

“I’m having a guest on weekend, I’ve got to talk to Mycroft personally, I need to meet with Janine and besides…” he smiled insincerely “it seems I should visit John and Mary to congratulate them.”

“Drop the last one. They’ll think you’re terminally ill or went nuts.”

“So do I but when the danger is gone and I know where I stand, there’s no reason to separate from them any longer” he answered, closing the laptop. “I’m going to sleep. If you don’t feel like going back to your flat, get some sleep upstairs or in the living room.”

“Shezza… what’s that suppose to mean?” Bill asked, getting up as Sherlock did the same. “You’ve been avoiding the doctor mostly because you’ve been jealous. Don’t try to tell me that putting him at risk was the main reason. What you’ve just said sounded as if...”

“As if what?”

“As if you’re not jealous anymore…?” he said and when Sherlock didn’t answer, he sighed and rolled his eyes. “Do you know why you’re going to visit him? Just to show off, something like… _Look at me, I’ve found someone new and I’m doing fine without you_. That’s the only reason: showing him that you moved on and that there’s someone else.”

“Do you _really_ think I’m visiting John to brag about my relationship with Moriarty? With a man who threatened his life twice, who forced me to fake suicide and run away from the country and who killed dozens of people while playing with me? Are you nuts?” he laughed bitterly at the mere thought about talking to John about Jim since he was almost sure their friendship would end as soon as the doctor would hear the truth; of course, some day he would learn it anyway but there was no point in telling him that in near future. “You really need to slow down with drugs if you think I’ll tell him…”

“You won’t need to tell him anything” Bill interrupted with irritation. “He’ll notice something is up and he’ll surely try to convince you to confide in.”

“I highly doubt it. He’ll be happy to see me and distracted because of the child since most of people don’t focus on their relatives and friends when they become parents and he won’t be an exception. He’ll ask how the investigation is going, I’m sure of that, but I won’t even need to lie when I’ll tell him there’s no progress… I’m not looking for Moriarty anymore since I know where to find it and I’m not looking for evidence against him as well, so there _really_ is no progress in that case. And I can assure you, he won’t be interested _who I go to bed with_ ” he said colder than he intended.

“Oh, Shezza…” Bill sighed. “The fact you’re not his pressure point doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you. The doctor will want to know the details if he notice something important has happened in your personal life and I assure you he _will notice_. Since Magnussen’s case you’ve been trying to erase the memory of him and keep him away and he probably has no idea why you’ve been like that and… oh gosh, he wouldn’t cut you out just because he realised he’s your pressure point while you’re just a friend and if you don’t want to lose him, you should…”

“So if he asks about my personal life” Sherlock interrupted, ignoring the rest of Bill’s speech “I’ll lie. I’m a good liar and will have lots of occasions to become even better in the coming months. Good night, Bill” he finished dryly and hastily went out of the living room.

***

 

 


	20. News and associations

***

Sherlock and Bill spent Wednesday staring at the computer screens, listening to Corey’s recordings and trying to hack Dublin’s high schools’ servers. At the end of the day they ruled out the last of them and - as they established the day before – they decided that the school which protections they couldn’t break was the one Jim attended to and it was him who made hacking its servers impossible. He must have thought that no-one would every be looking for Rose and that’s why he didn’t protect the nursing home that well, while in Brighton the only thing which indicated a boy named James Hawkins ever attended the primary school were some paper documents which wouldn’t be much help if you didn’t know what to look for. The persona of the Sussex’s lecturer couldn’t have been deleted without raising suspicion and leaving the note about Jamie Dawson’s death might have been an accident or on purpose. Whereas… the files from Dublin’s high school contained information about the part of Jim’s life which he had never mentioned to Sherlock. James Patton was the most mysterious and well hidden mask of all and it was also a connection between the abused child from Clane and a criminal mastermind; that’s why he really needed to find out if his suspicions about a dominant teenager who pulled the strings in his high school were true.

Theoretically they didn’t have any proof that the unable-to-hack school was the right one but nevertheless Sherlock booked plane tickets for Bill for Sunday morning and suggested to contact the woman from Clane he met online and set up everything. The worst possibility was losing some money and the clothes he  _ lent _ Bill – he didn’t suppose he would ever get them back – since the man couldn’t visit Joyce dressed like an unemployed junkie living in an abandoned attic.

Listening to the recordings was a waste of time. Corey was irritating and quite dumb for a doctor – after using the recorder for two months he still couldn’t remember to turn it on and off at the right time. Sherlock and Bill spent about fourteen hours in total trying to get anything interesting out of the recordings but there was nothing which could help them. In the end, they went to sleep after midnight and on Thursday morning – after eating a breakfast and spending some time with Mrs. Hudson, who was whining about visiting John and Mary – they got back to work.

At first they planned to share the recordings but something kept on disturbing them; just as the landlady left the flat, a client came – first one in a while – stating she had already visited the place few times but nobody was here. In other circumstances the detective would have ignored her but he was so bored of listening to Corey’s dubious piece of work that he decided the case of mysterious break-ins which was happening every Friday for long weeks was promising. He left the flat just to waste four hours for nothing and after he came back he only snapped that the case was  _ less than a five _ .

When he thought about it later he realized that he only took the case because clients hadn’t been visiting him for a long time and those who tried to set up a meeting via e-mail he was ditching since Christmas. Baker Street had become quite empty after his hospital stay and the rumors Janine spread in the newspapers were to blame since they made the clients less prone to sharing their secrets with him… especially when it came to women, who didn’t trust him like before when they believed he was a coldhearted seducer. He grinded his teeth just thinking about Janine’s stories, sat on the couch and stared at the ceiling, making a gesture towards Bill to turn on the recordings again.

Half an hour later Mycroft called to Bill to complain about Sherlock missing his calls but the detective, exasperated after the pointless case, fobbed him off and ignored the questions about Moriarty. He felt like throwing the phone against the wall and only refrained from it because he was aware of the fact he couldn’t dismiss his brother when they had an important matter to talk about in person. They agreed to meet the next morning and after that Sherlock stated he had an urgent matter and hung up.

“That’s not urgent. That’s the most idiotic and pointless thing we’ve ever been doing” Bill said, moving away from his laptop. “Shezza, do you know what I was listening to when you went out with your client? That moron went to a bar with the physical therapist, you know, that guy who he has lunches with and talks about nurses’ butts…”

“Get to the point.”

“They spent an hour choosing a beer. A fucking hour! And you know what? In the end they didn’t even order anything because _the_ _waitress wasn’t kind enough_. Then they went to a club where Butler forgot to take the recorder from his coat and I had to listen to some cheap electro until this damned device died!”

“Still better than his conversations in the hospital.”

“Oh, I assure you it wasn’t better” Bill snapped and took a deep breath. “Do you really think we’ll learn anything important? We’ve been listening to the recordings for long hours and he only mentioned your name few times and…”

“And never really talked about me with anyone. I’ve got no idea why Jim chose a guy like that for a spy in Barts. I mean… During the new year’s party he helped Jim but it might have been the only time Corey was useful for him.”

“So why are we still listening to the recordings…?”

“Because we may find  _ something _ and beside we’ve got nothing else to do for now.” He rolled his eyes when Bill looked at him doubtfully. “We couldn’t hack that high school servers, I’m not going to look for information concerning Jamie Dawson and there’s no chance to get Owen Patton’s court files… by the way, is there anything you came up with?”

“No. Just look at his files from Barts HR Department… that’s all bullshit. His place of residence, employment history and credentials are fake and it seems Moriarty didn’t even bother to make it believable. The only thing which wasn’t a poor lie was the fact he was born in Ireland but his accent must have been too strong to hide it. I really don’t know how he managed to work in Barts for two years without breeding suspicion.”

“All right… so, what more do we have? I’m not talking about the list of Barts students since I still think it won’t help us.”

“Corey’s CV, nothing special… well, nothing we haven’t already found out: he comes from Brighton, works in some shitty hole, few-months gap and then he gets a well-paid job in London. You’ve given me his family photo but I didn’t notice anything special.”

“I’ll take a look at it later since there was something suspicious about his sister. But for now…” he took a deep breath and reluctantly turn the recording back on.

The task was so boring that Sherlock’s focus was slipping away once and again while Bill started dozing off. They both were losing hope to hear anything important but they went on, taking short breaks and trying to take comfort in the fact that before evening they were going to have half of the work done.

The only bright spots of the evening was the moments when Sherlock was texting with Jim; nothing serious, just short messages with no purpose but… when they were coming from someone special they were becoming special too.  _ What are you doing? Have you eaten anything? Are people around you just as annoying as they usually are? _ After the last one he immediately answered that during his current case he had come upon a guy dumber than a goldfish and that he was worrying about the fate of the world if the ground wasn’t going to open up to take such a knuckleheads. When he was writing it, Corey was telling a  _ forty year old _ man with a broken arm that  _ a healing fairy would visit him at night to cast a bones-settling spell _ .

_ When are you going to visit me?  _ He wrote around five p.m. o’clock, desperately needing something to wait for after the long hours of listening to the recordings.

_ Saturday evening. Ok for you, honey? _

_ Come around 11 p.m. I don’t want you to run into my landlady. _

_ Late night date? Well, well… I always thought you were more innocent. _

_ We’ll only talk. _

_ Oh, really? _

_ Have a nice evening, Jim. XXX  _ He answered and quickly put the phone aside, ignoring Bill’s curious glance. This time Sherlock didn’t need a mirror to know which emotions were visible on his face – all of them were reflecting in his friend’s all-seeing eyes. They got back to work and didn’t speak until Bill stated he would die unless they took a break and then – run out of the flat to buy some energy drinks. Sherlock didn’t comment it but turn off the recordings, planning to take a look on the Corey’s family photo but before he managed to do so, Mrs. Hudson came in with a mobile phone in her hand and disapproving look on her face.

“John called. You’ve apparently been ignoring his texts and calls since Tuesday and…”

“I haven’t got any messages.”

“Check that out, will you?” she said with emphasis and the man rolled his eyes, irritated. Nevertheless, he went to his bedroom to check the phone which stayed there since Jim had visited him even though he thought he would have heard if it had rung. He took the mobile and nervously tapped the touch screen but it stayed blank.  _ Out of battery _ . He quickly went back to the living room and plugged it into a charger, trying not to look at Mrs. Hudson who was wringing her hands over his inadvertence. “Oh Sherlock… but you  _ never _ forget about your phone…! What's happening to you...?”

“I’ve got a case. Boring but time-consuming” he said lamely, aware of the fact it didn’t sound convincing. She was right: he had never forgot about charging his phone… until he started investigating Moriarty’s past. And when he got his old mobile back, every single message which was sent to it meant more than a hundred others.

“Call him. It’d be nice if we visited them. Saturday would…”

“On Saturday’s afternoon I’m busy” he said, typing PIN code as soon as the phone turned on. “But we can visit them tomorrow.”

“If only they’re free that’ll be perfect. I’ll buy something for Alice from both of us since you…”

“Yes, that’s right” Sherlock murmured, flinching at the sight of incoming messages from Mycroft, John and Mary. He deleted them all without reading and then, heavy-heartedly dialled the familiar phone number, aware he shouldn’t delay the conversation. He saw Mrs Hudson heading towards the kitchen and putting the kettle on and a moment later he heard the first ring; John answered before the second one.

“Could you please explain to me why you didn’t bother to text me back?” the man asked with reproach without even saying hello.

“My phone died and I was too busy to remember about charging it.”

“You have never…!” John started and took a deep breath. “Sherlock, I know that Moriarty’s case may take a lot of time but you’ve  _ never _ forgot about your phone…! What’s going on?”

“I’d really like to tell you but I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Sherlock what…”

“I’m calling because Mrs. Hudson wants us to visit you” Sherlock interrupted before the doctor managed to finish the question. “Shall we come tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yes, of course” he said and the detective almost saw him rubbing his forehead tiredly. “Still, I hope you’ll tell me  _ something _ , since lately you’ve been acting strangely, even for you. I only saw you like this twice, before you disappeared and during Magnussen’s case and both times you…” he paused, probably deciding that reproaches about the past weren’t a good idea if he wanted to make things better between them. “What did you discover that you’ve changed like that?” he finally asked.

“Lots of fascinating things I can’t talk about.”

“Things concerning Moriarty.”

“Yes.”

“And you can’t tell me about because…?”

“Because there are secrets you wouldn’t like to know and that’s what this case is about” he said calmly. “You didn’t want to learn about Mary’s past. I assure you that it would be…”

“I love Mary and that’s why I don’t want to know what she exactly she was doing” he snorted. “Comparing them is out of place. What…”

“If you knew what  _ I’m _ doing  _ now  _ you would understand why I don’t want to tell you anything. End of conversation. Do you  _ still _ want me coming?”

“Of course I do!”

“I presume you won’t stop asking questions.”

“Great deduction, Sherlock.”

“And you realize you won’t get anything out of me.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Alright” he said and glanced at Mrs. Hudson, who was looking straight at him over the kitchen table where three cups full of fruit tea were brewing. “We’ll come tomorrow, as soon as I get over Mycroft’s morning visit.”

“Three o’clock p.m.?”

“Something about it.”

“Great. So…” he paused. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And… Sherlock, have you read my texts?”

“No, I decided to call first.”

“Delete them all without reading. I’ve gone too far. Just… delete them” he said nervously. “But if you read them after all since you wouldn’t be yourself if you didn’t… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said these things, no matter what.” He said goodbye and hung up, leaving Sherlock confused.  

His friend was right: he wasn’t like himself, since a month ago – after deleting some meaningful texts from him - Sherlock could have broken into John’s house only to steal his phone and read the messages on his outbox. Now only a thought about it seemed absurd and… well, it surely  _ was _ absurd, but when he imagined deleting Jim’s message which turned out to be important and which the man didn’t want Sherlock to read anymore, he would be able to do almost everything to get them back.

He closed his eyes, and when Mrs. Hudson gave him a cup of tea and started asking where had he bought such a delicious thing, he thoughtlessly said that he had brought it from Ireland and no, he hadn’t thought he’d ever like the taste of cherry so much. 

***

 

Mycroft came to Baker Street at nine o’clock a.m., put a soaked umbrella aside and hung up his coat. Sherlock was watching him from the couch and when the man sat on the armchair in front of him, he pointed to a tray with a freshly brewed tea. He had chosen a sweetish vanilla, deciding his brother would like it better than a sour cherry and getting him into a good mood was the best idea if he wanted to achieve his goals. He smirked, when he saw Mycroft eyes shining at the mere smell of the tea, proud of himself that he managed to make a good first impression.

“I didn’t know you liked that brand of tea” Mycroft said and thoughtlessly took a chocolate biscuit – a gift from Mrs. Hudson, of course.

“I didn’t know I liked it before it was given to me” he said and sipped the tea from the cup. “Go on, brother dear. I asked you some questions when we met the last time and I’d like to hear the answers. I have something to say to you as well” he said encouragingly; his brother raised an eyebrow but refrained from questioning him right away.

“I’ve got some answers but I don’t suppose you’d find the information I’ve got shocking or helpful” the man said. “The most important thing is the fact that we’ve got a confirmation of my suspicions about Moriarty being captured a year ago by a terrorist organization which had prepared the attack in London’s underground.”

“Are you absolutely sure about it?”

“Oh, yes” he said and took out a flash drive from his pocket. “Everything we’ve discovered is here. I strongly advise against showing this to your junkie friend since it’s strictly confidential. In short… my men confirmed that a man code-named  _ Stave _ was, shall we say… a  _ first-level manager  _ in the terrorist organization responsible for the attack in the underground _.  _ And it was him who planned and organized Moriarty’s kidnapping.” He sipped the tea and cherished the sweet flavor for a moment. “He had been quite inept though and left some traces which my men found few hours after our last conversation. That’s how we tracked down a guy who… well, the only thing you need to know is the fact it required some convincing to make him talk. He told us that Stave hadn’t been in… the business for long and he hadn’t even been involved in the negotiations between Moriarty and the payers, but a year ago he offered the bosses to catch the man responsible for planning the attack in the underground and promised… how to put this?” he pretended to wonder even though he surely knew perfectly well what he wanted to say. “ _ That he would ensure that the man would never screw up anything again.  _ It’s strange that the bosses didn’t blame Moran for the failure but… well. As I’ve already told you, he was acquitted and cleared of the allegation of terrorism…”

“Orders from above, I get it.”

“Yes. Anyway, the bosses didn’t care about things they might get out of Moriarty, that’s one thing our source was sure about. He was going to be tortured and beaten to the state of begging for death and killed in the utmost gruesome way. His body was going to be put somewhere on display as a cautionary tale.”

“Tell me more about that Stave-guy” Sherlock asked, trying to sound interested and not to show the tension his brother’s last sentence caused.

“And there things get tough since the man we captured really doesn’t know much” Mycroft said, clearly irritated about that. “He was only a lookout and when Stave’s thugs brought Moriarty to…”

“Where?”

“He hasn’t told us  _ yet _ but I assure you, we’ve got our methods to get it out of him in a matter of time” he said with a malicious grin. “Maybe I should be more specific about my doings. I don’t do that for you and certainly not for Moriarty. The man we captured… thanks to you, I must admit that… gives us the opportunity to get the terrorist organization which is a threat to national security. Even if the small fishes are dead…”

“Wait a minute. Tell me everything from the beginning. You’re talking about Jim’s rescue? Some people were killed, right?”

“Yes. You’re right, let’s start from the beginning. When Moriarty was being held, our informer was just walking around and didn’t care about the prisoner at all. He had seen him being taken there and described him well but he still isn’t aware Moriarty is a well known criminal. He is a foreigner and he didn’t even know what happened in England three years ago.”

“So what does he know?”

“That Moriarty and Stave knew each other and if I understood his hysteric rants correctly, things between them were quite… personal. I suppose that Stave was allowed to take care of this task because he was the only person in the organization who knew how to get to Moriarty. He might have known him before he… well, became the famous criminal.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Our informer saw them once shortly after Moriarty had been captured. He stated  _ he had got the feeling _ , but, unfortunately, he didn’t understand much from what they were saying even though his English is communicative.”

“Maybe they both had a strong accent…?”

“That’s what I’ve thought but that guy didn’t call it that.”

“ _ Irish _ accent…” Sherlock murmured and Mycroft frowned.

“Do you know something I should be aware of?”

“Maybe and that’s why…” he stopped and started looking out for cigarettes and when his brother gave him his own, he sighed with relief and took one. “Tell me everything you know and I’ll share my new theory with you.”

“He was held for few weeks” Mycroft continued and his fingers started moving nervously on the table. “Our informer said he didn’t remember exactly for how long and when it came to rescuing Moriarty he didn’t remember it at all. Well, that’s what he…  _ stated _ at first. After a  _ long persuasions _ he admitted that after he had seen a dozen of perfectly trained and armed men he had just run away. He insisted he had warned the men inside the building that something had been going on but I don’t think he did it. Moran was part of the group – his description was laconic but given the circumstances it must have been him. Our informer observed it all from afar, he heard shouting and screams and then the building was burnt.”

“And that guy just ran away after all of it? Just like that?”

“Yes, he states he did” Mycroft snorted, apparently not believing that this guy’s insubordination had no consequences. “If that’s true, that’s the proof that Stave was really a bungler and that he blew it all. The men he had hired weren’t trustful since three of them…” he paused, when Sherlock frowned. “Yes, apparently two more lookouts managed to run away… Nobody’s been looking for them and I suppose they were considered dead but our informer wasn’t sure about it since he didn’t know much about Stave’s bosses.”

“And that Stave-guy… what happened to him? Was he killed?”

“Oh, he surely wasn’t. And now we do everything to find him, but our informer’s description is rather vague and that can be anyone.”

“And what the description says?”

“Brown or dark blond hair, tall, medium build.”

“Not much.”

“But it seems you’ve got something more.”

“I might have if my theory is right” he said uncertainly, took his laptop and opened a folder where he saved all the files he and Bill gathered. He found Owen Patton’s old photo and showed it to Mycroft. “It was taken twenty years ago but if that’s Stave, there’s a chance your informer recognize him.”

“Who’s that?”

“Long story short…” he took a deep breath “he’s Kevin Patton’s younger brother” he finished which made Mycroft choked on a tea.

“What…?”

“And Jim’s employee… well, he  _ was _ his employee once” Sherlock continued. “To summarize: he had been listed as dead in USA just as Kevin and they came back to Great Britain separately. I may be wrong but I presume they weren't in touch anymore.”

“He worked for Moriarty and betrayed him” Mycroft said but Sherlock shook his head.

“I think… He and Kevin… well, Jim had his reasons to want them dead but nevertheless he hired them. They might have not known  _ Moriarty _ was their cousin since they moved to the States when he was only seventeen. Kevin probably didn’t see him even once while Owen… he worked in Barts for two years as a head of administration and it was him who enabled Jim to get a job in IT without causing anyone’s attention. He couldn’t have recognized him as his cousin. Besides, I talked to one of the workers who knew Jim and he stated that he seemed invisible and when he suddenly resigned no-one really noticed it and… there’s something more I learnt from different source but I won’t tell you a word unless you promise me something beforehand. I need to trust you about it even though taking your recent actions into account, your word’s not much.”

“Get to the point, Sherlock.”

“I want you to look for Patton and one of the men I’m going to tell you about… leaving the other alone.”

“I won’t agree until you tell me what that’s about” Mycroft said with a smirk and Sherlock knew he wouldn’t win that battle.

“The day I and Jim faked our suicides, Owen Patton reportedly caused a car accident and killed two people. I don’t know who was the first but the second was _ Jamie Dawson _ .”

“I don’t know…”

“That’s the name Jim used working in Barts. I lied to you few years ago, stating that nobody knew him and he wasn’t even employed there and you got Irene Adler’s case to deal with so you didn’t check it” he said, not trying to pretend to be sorry about it.

“Sherlock…” Mycroft started warningly but the detective interrupted him.

“I want you to find the information about that accident. How the trial went, how he defended himself, what was the sentence and how it all ended. I want to know if there was anything suspicious… actually,  _ what _ was suspicious about it, since it’s obvious that Jamie Dawson couldn’t have died in a car accident if he was at Barts rooftop at the same time and we both know he’s alive.”

“How do you know that Jamie Dawson was a fake persona Moriarty created and not a real person whose personality he borrowed?” he asked and Sherlock sighed, knowing that he shouldn’t have hoped that Mycroft wouldn’t think about it.

“That’s why” he said and opened University of Sussex webpage he had saved on his hard drive to show it to Mycroft.

“That’s…”

“That’s really one of Jim’s personas.”

“I want to know  _ everything _ about it.”

“No… please, just don’t” Sherlock asked quietly. “I didn’t dig deeper and I don’t want you to. It was… a non-threatening, alternative persona he had to kill because of Magnussen. I gave you Owen Patton who, if he’s still alive, may get you to the terrorists so… do something for me and don’t work on an expose on Jim.”

“Not working on it has its price and you know what it is, brother dear” Mycroft said raising his chin and straightening up, so that now he was looking down at Sherlock. “The information you’ve given me, if true, might be something… big. Even though the quality of Owen Patton’s photo you got is poor, if criminal charges were brought against him in the past, I’ll find a better one and show it to my informer. If he was responsible for kidnapping Moriarty and had worked for terrorists, my agents will investigate that case and there’s a good chance that thanks to that they’ll get to the organization which is responsible for the attack on the London Underground… well, then I’ll make sure you get a financial compensation for the information you’ve given to help secret service. Still, that’s not enough for me to risk my career and...”

“National, mine and the rest of the world’s security” Sherlock finished for him, not feeling like listening to it from Mycroft. “Yes, I’ve talked to Jim about your offer. No, he wasn’t impressed and at first he got furious about me even asking for something like that.”

“I don’t care about his feelings and emotional outbursts. What did you get out of him?”

“I’m not the one to get anything out of him and I’m afraid you’ll have to meet in person since I don’t want to be a part of your deal. I’m not interested in politics” he smirked but quickly got serious when Mycroft looked at him murderously. “I don’t know the specifics. Jim only told me to ask if you were interested in KAPPA project and mention that…” he paused when he saw his brother got pale “that the Russians had already given him an offer which is worth considering.”

“Sherlock… are you sure…” he started, took a deep breath and almost yanked a cigarette from the pack. “Are you sure that’s the name you heard…?”

“Absolutely.”

“And that Russia…”

“I’m not an idiot, contrary to what you were telling me my whole childhood. That’s what Jim said: KAPPA project, Russians, an offer. So, shall I tell him that you’re not interested since you don’t believe in my ability to remember one single name?”

“Are you sure he offered a collaboration and not…”

“Yes, I am” he snapped with irritation.

“If I pass the word to MI6 and it turns out he lied, I’ll be compromised.”

“So don’t do that and think about it on your own.”

“Do you even realize what position you are putting me in?”

“No, since I don’t know what KAPPA is and I don’t care about it at all. What shall I answer to Jim?”

“That I need two days to make a decision and then I contact you. Will he wait with his actions?”

“Oh, I’m sure he will. Especially since I talked to him three days ago” he said and he cherished Mycroft’s face, which was terrified, shocked and furious at the same time, for a moment. “He didn’t tell me there was any rush. I’ll ask him to wait till Sunday and I assure you he  _ will _ wait.”

“How do you know he hasn’t sold the information yet? Dear god, Sherlock, you’ve got no idea how important…”

“When it comes to Jim I’m better than Irene and  _ that’s why _ I know it. Do not ask if I have already slept with him as it’s getting boring. And light the cigarette you’ve been crushing in your fingers for a minute, drink some tea and calm down. I know what I’m doing and I know that when Jim asked me about it he was honest.”

“He’s been here” Mycroft said as if he didn’t hear what Sherlock just said.

“That’s rather obvious.”

“You forget about one thing, brother dear” he snapped coldly and stood up with his face looking like a emotionless mask. “Your problem is that you think you’re beating him in miss Adler’s style while it’s  _ him _ who took her role and you’re the naïve, innocent cretin, who fell for ambiguous sexual tricks,  _ again _ .”

“None of us is beaten and none of us is Irene” he said, standing up and showing Mycroft the door. “I’m waiting till Sunday. If you don’t answer before noon, I’ll tell Jim that, unfortunately, my brother is to afraid to work with him to believe him and save the country from the possibility of revealing some important information to our eastern friends.”

“You already know the answer. The only thing I need is the time to analyze all the opportunities and threats.”

“So you’re going to lose two days just because you don’t trust me.”

“I don’t trust  _ him _ ” he said dryly. “I’ll speak to you soon” he finished and quickly left the flat, taking his umbrella and coat with him. Sherlock was watching him until the door closed and walked up to the window to see his brother getting into the government car. He sighed heavily and sat down on the couch, staring at the flash drive he was given. He didn’t suppose he would find there anything Mycroft hadn’t already told him but nevertheless he decided to check it and sort out everything he knew.

Reading the transcript of the interrogation took him an hour and he only glanced at the photos of the guy Mycroft’s men caught – he didn’t recognized him and the name hadn’t been listed by Bill yet; he added him with a short note and, ignoring his brothers order to keep it all secret, sent his friend an updated version of the database. Then, he spent few minutes wondering what exactly he should tell Jim and finally – he took out his phone.

_ My brother doesn’t believe you want to work with him and he suspect that’s a trick. He’s going to give us the answer on Sunday. _

_ How do I convince him I’m not lying? _

_ If I knew I’d tell you what to do.  _ He wrote and he had to wait almost ten minutes for a reply but the rest of the conversation went fast.

_ Tomorrow I’ll give you some documents for him which may help us. _

_ That’s too risky since If he gets important data he may stand us up. _

_ I know but I care about it enough to risk. I hope you don’t doubt it. _

_ Are our cards good enough to play that way? _

_ If you knew what KAPPA is you wouldn’t question it. Mycroft’s resistance to work with me is our only weak card. _

_ There’s no place for those if we’re trying to win a grand slam. _

_ We’ll manage if you let me lead the game. You’ve told him about KAPPA, you’ve told me about his reaction and since I’m the declarer, that’s the point your role ends. Let me take care of everything. _

_ If you’re sure about it… When do you want to meet him? _

_ Oh, Sherlock, I’m giving sexual suggestions about my dominant personality and you’re still so serious…? _

“It  _ is _ serious!” Sherlock snapped; he decided that even though he didn’t like talking on the phone this time it was unavoidable. “My brother’s dangerous and he needs these two days just to find a way how to get the information from you and give nothing in return.”

“I’m better than him when it comes to manipulation and I’ll make sure everything is secure. If he does anything wrong the consequences for the country will be disastrous.”

“Are you going to blackmail him?”

“He did it so I have a right to do the same. And a few buildings may be blown up if he doesn’t honor the terms of our agreement. If it turns out your dear brother isn’t going to give us his blessing, I will have no reason to be a good boy anymore.”

“And what  _ exactly _ will you do if he betrays us and gets you imprisoned?” Sherlock asked even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“At first I’ll play a game with him, one compared to which our first game was nothing more than playing tag. I assure you, there is a lot of…  _ projects _ which I can activate even from a prison. I’ll sign the death warrant of him, free myself and then… we could just elope and live happily ever after halfway around the world.”

“Activate…” Sherlock started, ignoring Jim’s last sentence. “Why didn’t you do that a year ago when you were captured?”

“Because back then my criminal web was too small and weak but now it’s getting bigger and stronger with every week. The longer Mycroft wait the less his chances to beat me are. Sherlock, I…” he paused for a first time in their conversation and his voice got softer so that he didn’t sound like  _ Moriarty _ anymore. “I’ll do everything to prevent it. I don’t want to start a war with your brother. I just want to live my life, I’m ready to stop bothering the government and the police and give up some of my criminal activities. I’ve already changed and I will change for the better even further since you’re…” he got silent for a moment. “Since you make me want to change things which not so long ago seemed to be unchangeable. You know it, don’t you…? Just tell me that you believe me since if you don’t, all of this has no purpose…”

“If I didn’t believe you we wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Just say so.”

“I believe everything you’re saying and I trust you. Is that enough?”

“Yes. Yes, that’s enough” Jim said quietly. “See you soon, Sherly. I can’t wait for tomorrow.  _ It’s not enough to say _ …”

“…that I miss you” Sherlock finished when Jim paused. They were silent for a few seconds, suddenly not knowing what to say and then, at the same moment, they murmured goodbyes and hung up.

Few hours later Sherlock was sitting in a taxi next to Mrs Hudson who was chattering cheerfully and only then he realized, that when John had been talking to his ex-girlfriends – and now to Mary – on the phone like he and Jim just did, most of the conversation ended with the words  _ I love you _ . And it hit him that if he had said those words to Jim he wouldn’t have lied nor misinterpreted his feelings seeing a  _ little crush _ as  _ love _ … and he just  _ knew _ that Jim would have answered with the same words and that he would have been honest as well.

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter was more difficult to translate than I first thought it'd be and that's why it took me quite long... Holmes brothers' conversation was a bit complicated even in Polish and I really hope I translated all the important details right.


	21. Janine - 1

***

The first thing Sherlock noticed after passing through the doorway of John and Mary’s house was the smell of sweet perfume. He knew it far too well since it had been filling his flat for long weeks and even after the person who used it stopped visiting him, he still felt it on the wallpapers, upholsteries and towels. _Janine_. He didn’t even need to ask if she was here – John’s meaningful glance told him everything. The man invited him and Mrs Hudson inside with a forced smile, showed his ex-landlady where the baby room was and then gestured towards Sherlock to follow him to the living room. There, they both sat in the armchairs and waited until the elder women closed the door on the other side of the hall behind her.

“I’m sorry” John started with a tired voice “I had no idea Mary invited Janine.”

“When did she come?”

“Fifteen minutes ago and I learnt she was going to come at the exact moment she appeared at the front door.”

“I guess running away and coming back when she leaves is no option.”

“That would be a bit rude, yes.”

“I see” he murmured and looked around the living room, noticing things which, even though newer and cleaner, were similar to the stuff Sherlock had on Baker Street. The color of upholsteries, the fireplace, the arrangement of the shelves… even the shape of the couch. He snorted but stopped himself from saying something like _If you wanted to live on Baker Street you shouldn’t have moved out_. “Did Janine say anything about me?” he asked but it seemed that these words were out of place as well since John winced.

“Things so absurd that I started doubting if the stories she told the press were true” he answered dryly.

“What do you mean?”

“Just leave it. Do you really want to talk about her? She’s with Mary, Alice and Mrs. Hudson so we’ve got a moment for ourselves.”

“I guess I should ask what is like being a father” Sherlock said nervously. “Mrs. Hudson bought you something. I chipped in for the present. Apparently that’s what you’re suppose to do.”

“Sherlock…” John sighed heavily.

“I’ve got something for you too” he continued, reaching into his pocket to take out a glass ball with three-dimensional panorama of Dublin which he had bought few days ago at the airport. “Another thing you’re supposed to do. Buying your friends souvenirs when you’re abroad.”

“You were in Ireland?” John asked, not commenting his friend’s odd behavior – after all he was used to it. He took the gift and shook it thoughtlessly, so that the fake snowflakes started floating.

“Buying that kind of thing anywhere else wouldn’t make sense” Sherlock answered, staring at John’s fingers. When he realized what he was doing, he quickly looked aside.

“You were looking for Moriarty” the man said few moments later and carefully placed the glass ball on the table.

“Sort of” he said and looked at the tiny projection of part of Dublin where the first snowflakes started falling. “To make things simpler… yes, I did. But it’s far more complicated than that.”

“And you can’t tell me about it, yes, I’ve already heard it. Sherlock, for god's sake, tell me what’s that about, at least _in general_. I’m really worried about you. Your behavior when Donovan was captured was scandalous but in the end you saved her, whereas everything else…” he paused for a moment and raised his voice. “All those secrets, lies, trips and that damned thing with forgetting about your phone…! You’ve never forgotten about it. Never!”

“There’s no _in general_ which I can tell you about without making you ask more questions I can’t answer to. You’re smart enough to know I _could_ cheat you but I’d rather not say anything than lie.”

“Tell me _anything_ ” he asked desperately. “I promise not to question you further. Tell me anything which will calm me down since now I can’t stop torturing myself with the thought of you standing on another rooftop and jumping but this time doing so for real and…”

“I’m not going to kill myself and Moriarty’s not going to force me to do that” Sherlock interrupted; he couldn’t stand listening to such a senseless and incorrect theory. “All right. I speak, you listen, right?”

“Right. No questions. And even if I ask about anything, you don’t need to answer.”

“I’m… investigating Moriarty” he started and John took a deep breath to refrain from shouting that _this_ he had already figured out. “But I’m not looking for evidence against him nor do I try to destroy his criminal web.”

“You’ve apparently destroyed it when you were… out of here.”

“It turned out that when I was destroying his web he was already building a new one. And his experience helped him to create the structures I can’t work out and never will be able to. I’ve got a list of hundreds of people which may be or have been connected to him somehow but only a few of them I identified as a part of his web. And I don’t know what to do with them after all and how to connect them with each other. He is a genius and he created it all predicting what I’d be doing and whom I’d be able to find… he know how my deductions work and he build a new empire in such way that my skills are useless. However… the thing he didn’t predict is the fact I’m not interested in his new criminal web so after all his efforts… well. Let’s just say that only thing he achieved is the fact that, since Mycroft’s deduction skills are similar to mine, my brother won’t work out the new structures as well, so Moriarty is safe for now.”

“Just tell me if I’m right… Moriarty lost his old web but has a new one, you know about it but you aren’t going to even _try_ to destroy it.”

“Just so.”

“Yet you’re investigating him… _Him_. Not his web and criminal activities since you don’t care about finding an evidence to put him in a jail.”

“Putting him in a jail is the last… maybe second to last thing I want when it comes to him.”

“I know I wasn’t supposed to ask about anything but that sounds so absurd that… damned! If you don’t care about his _business stuff_ , what the hell do you want to know about him?!”

“The same thing _he_ wanted to learn about _me_ when Mycroft had him imprisoned and was _torturing_ him” he snapped, angry at the mere thought about that. _The scars_ … Jim must have got some of them right then and somehow he was afraid that when he identified them he would have to refrain from rushing to his brother just to give him identical ones.

“His… past?” John asked, getting him back to reality. “Why… Do you… Do you want to do to him what he did to you…?”

“Don’t be silly” Sherlock said with irritation. “I need the information for my own purpose. The press, police and government won’t be involved.”

“When Mycroft realizes…”

“He knows what I’m doing, he’s furious and devastated but he realizes that there’s nothing he could do to stop me unless he wants his nightmares about me and Moriarty come true. I blackmailed him, he blackmailed me. We’ll hurt each other in the most drastic way unless each of us comply with the other’s request. That’s why he and…” Sherlock paused, almost calling Jim by his first name “and Moriarty need to exchange information and promises for the greater good. Most of time they have conflicting interests but there’s one thing important for _both_ of them: me.”

“So, am I to take it your brother is going to make a deal with this wicked criminal and let him run free?” John snapped. “That’s disgusting. _You are you_ , you’re not a public servant but a celebrity-detective who always breaks the rules and I got used to it while your brother…”

“My brother would rather see him rotting in pieces six feet under, I assure you” Sherlock interrupted him angrily. “You wanted to know the truth and that’s it. You weren’t supposed to ask questions but listen to what I’m willing to say.”

“And you were supposed to calm me down but everything you say makes me worry even more than I already did…!”

“That’s why I didn’t want to talk at all” he said and crossed his arms, staring at John daringly. “But you forced me to. There’s nothing I could tell that would assure you I’m safe, maybe except of the fact that if Mycroft decides I’m in a real danger he will catch Moriarty and…” he paused for a moment but John’s pleading eyes made him finished the sentence he didn’t want to speak aloud “and he will kill him in front of my eyes. So maybe you’re actually right about my phone, I shouldn’t have forgotten about it since the mere fact that it’s turned off might make Mycroft think that something’s wrong. And _that_ might make my brother kill Moriarty” he finished and quickly looked aside since he was almost sure that John would realize how he felt about the possibility of Jim’s death just looking into his eyes.

“You’ve already saw him _dying_ once. You were sure he really killed himself for three years and it didn’t really affect you.”

“Yes, I thought he was dead” he said quietly, still avoiding John’s gaze. “I _saw him dying once_ and that's one time too many.”

“Sherlock you… you really don’t want him dead” John murmured, shocked and terrified by this. “He fascinates you and he’s the best entertainment you’ve ever had in your life. And that’s why you don’t want your brother hurting him and…” he paused and stared at Sherlock’s face. “Don’t you see it, for god’s sake…?! You’re watching him, you’re looking for his pressure points and you want to understand him since you’re so afraid that he may disappear again and this time disappear for good that using Mycroft you’ve built a piece of world for yourselves, one in which you’re playing games again and you’re going to do everything to protect him, to protect _a dangerous criminal_ , just because you don’t want anyone to spoil your fun!”

“Simply put, yes, you’re right” Sherlock admitted and looked straight at John face; this time it was the doctor who couldn’t bare the gaze and looked aside.

“That’s immoral and simply repulsive.”

“My brother orders his men to torture and murder as easily as if he was ordering pizza, your wife was an assassin, both of us has killed in cold blood and all our friends are twisted somehow. Do you really think that the thing about me and Moriarty is the worst? We were talking about it when Mary’s lies were revealed, do I really need to repeat everything I said back then?”

“What are you trying to tell me? Mary’s not Moriarty! And you know what? Since we’ve started talking I’ve had the impression that there’s a hidden meaning in everything you say and that it’s even worse than I…”

“What I’m trying to tell you is the fact that I’m not ordinary and that most of people thinks _unordinary_ means _a freak_ when it comes to me and I suppose they do have a point. I’m not going to beat Moriarty and I don’t want anybody beating him. That’s it, no hidden meanings” he said dryly, stood up and took his coat. “Do everything you want with it and…”

“Sit down, Sherlock” John interrupted and when the detective didn’t obey, he took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes. “Goddamn it, sit down! You want to have your secrets, you want to make me believe you’ve got your games with Moriarty under control – fine! But stop making a fool of me! I know something’s going on and I’m afraid it could end like it ended with that taxi driver! You think you’re so smart, so _genius_ …! That no-one can trick you, that you’re never wrong but, I assure you, _sometimes you are_ and I don’t want to lose you because of your stupid bravado and belief in your so-called omniscience!”

“So what do you want from me?” Sherlock asked, sitting back in the armchair. “There isn’t _another truth_. Do you want me to _lie_ so that you feel better and stop worrying?”

“I want you to be careful and playing with Moriarty…”

“Sherlock! What a surprise!” they heard from the hall and when they both looked over there, they saw Janine, who was leaning on the doorframe and smirking. “Trouble in paradise? Your first meeting in a week and so much emotion. I wish I came earlier since your conversation must have been fascinating.”

“Hello, Janine. Nice to see you” the detective said coldly and looked at her warningly but the woman either didn’t see it or pretended she didn’t, since she got closer to them and sat on the armrest next to Sherlock.

“Love doesn’t serve you well” she said, watching his pale face with a fake smile. “You seem so nervous. And tense!” She patted his shoulder and giggled. “I kind of expected a blissed out look and the phrase _I’ve finally got laid and I’m the master_ written on your face but you…”

“Sherlock, what is she talking about…?” John mumbled.

“I thought you’ve been talking about _him_ ” she said, peeking at Sherlock.

“Sherlock, what…”

“So you haven’t told him about your Tuesday date which apparently went beyond expectations? Oh, Sherl, how did you manage to refrain from boasting about it?” she asked, smirking. “Well, John… the thing is that our dear friend has finally found someone and even though the other party was rather laconic about it, I’ve got every reason to believe we should expect _rainbows and unicorns_ , a fierce devotion, love confessions and a quick engagement. Apparently I overestimated my brother’s pickup skills since Sherlock doesn’t really look like he’s _happily_ in love right now.”

“I’m sorry but…  what brother? Sherlock, what does she mean?” John asked but when he realized his friend wasn’t going to tell him anything, he stared at Janine. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, I guess I’ve already said enough, haven’t I, Sherl?” she said staring at Sherlock. “I mean, you should tell John the rest yourself while I should tell my brother that your relationship doesn’t make you as happy as it should. Right now you don’t look happy at all. He won’t like it, you know?”

“He won’t like the fact you’ve got a big mouth and you’re spreading our secrets all around.”

“I’m his pressure point and whatever I do…”

“So do I and, I assure you, he cares about me more than about you.”

“I don’t agree with you.”

“Because you’re an idiot!” he snapped and sharply stood up, which made Janine, who was leaning on his shoulder, lose her balance.

“SHERLOCK!” John shouted. “Past few weeks you’ve been so absorbed by the case that sometimes I couldn’t even contact you so what… what relationship, romance or _anything_ is she talking about? How could you find any time to…”

“That’s rather obvious” Janine said.

“It is not, because I don’t even know who your brother is! Mary has never told me you’ve got a sibling!”

“What…?” she murmured, finally realizing her mistake in full. “I thought that… well… I mean… actually my brother wasn’t specific about it but I’ve been sure that Sherlock at least told you _something_ after he broke into my house on new year's day and…”

“You broke into…”

“Janine, we’re leaving” Sherlock hissed. “We’re going to have a really, really long conversation but now just shut up since you may say something which bring me and him down. Your brother is quite squeamish about keeping his secrets safe and you’re the one who should know it better than anyone!” he said, taking his coat and scarf. “And John, you’d better forget about everything you’ve just heard, no matter which part of Janine’s revelations shocked you most and what you concluded.”

“What am I supposed to…”

“Dress up” the detective said to the woman, ignoring John. “I’ll wait outside.”

“No, I’ll wait for you” she answered, standing up. “I think you need a minute for…” she paused, when both men looked at her murderously. “I’ll leave you two alone” she added quickly, rushed towards the hall and few seconds later the front door closed behind her.

“What was she talking about?” John asked once again, this time somehow tiredly. “You and her brother… whoever that guy is… you could have told me that…” he paused, sighed heavily and walked up to Sherlock to hesitantly put his hand on his shoulder. “That you’ve got someone.”

“It wasn’t the first time Janine has called a relationship something which wasn’t really that” he said and moved nervously, kind of expecting that John’s touch might cause a familiar shivers, strange _movements_ and other sensations. Nevertheless, the seconds were passing and nothing happened even though John was so close, staring at him and waiting for further explanation. “She has gone too far and told some… really stupid things. She shouldn’t have… shouldn’t have said it all.”

“That’s not an answer. You’re dating that guy and whatever’s between you… Jesus Christ, I’ve never thought we would have a conversation like that after I learnt that you pretended to be in love with Janine, dated her to beat Magnussen and the sex was only an additional bene…”

“I have never slept with her” Sherlock interrupted him. “You didn’t even ask if the stories she told the press were true and _they weren’t_!”

“I can’t believe that you… for such a long time…” suddenly he fell silent and laughed with embarrassment, finally withdrawing his hand from Sherlock’s shoulder. “Damn, if you’re dating her _brother_ it’s quite logical… that you and her… or any other woman…” he bubbled and took a step back. “When did you two started…”

“Not so long ago and, I repeat, I don’t think you’d call a _relationship_ what’s between me and him. _No_ , you don’t know him, but _yes_ , you’ve met him and _no_ , I’m not going to introduce you, not now, not ever” he said, answering all the questions John could ask in advance.

“Why don’t you want to tell me more about him…?”

“For the same reasons Mary didn’t want you to know her past.”

“The past is _the past_ and that… secret relationship of yours is _the present_.”

“If too many people learn about it will become the past very fast. I’m sorry, John, but I can’t tell you anything more. I’m shocked you haven’t deduced the truth yet but I expect you’ll soon do and I don’t want to be around when it happens.”

“Sherlock…”

“I’m sorry. I really am” he said before he turned out and went out of the house, relieved by the fact that John didn’t follow him. When he saw Janine waiting for him by the taxi, he quickly took out his phone and texted Mary, knowing the she was now the only person who could mislead John and keep him away from the truth as long as possible.

_You’d better choose smarter friends than Janine. She almost told John about Moriarty and me. He’ll surely try to question you so think of a good lie to tell him so that he won’t realize who is the guy Janine was talking about when she revealed I’ve got a boyfriend._

“Where are we going?” Janine asked, clumsily getting in the car.

“Have you already sold your flat in London?”

“No, it’s too useful to get rid of it.”

“Give the address” he said and checked the answer he got from Mary.

_How does Janine know about it?_

_Moriarty himself told her._

_What…?_

_He’s her brother. Sorry I haven’t told you._ He answered back and peeked at Janine who was trying to look over his shoulder and find out with whom he was texting. _Don’t worry about her. She knows who her brother is but has no idea who you are. You only met because of Magnussen._

_I’ll think about something and will convince John to leave it._ He read a moment later and only then he put his phone in his pocket and spoke to Janine.

“I hope you realize what you’ve just done?”

“I really thought you were honest with John from the beginning and that the only thing he might have not known was how far your relationship with Jim…”

“In short, you weren’t thinking at all” Sherlock said. “After everything Jim had done to us in the past, how could you think I’d go to John to confess that I’ve changed my mind about Jim and _started dating him_? And even if I did, do you really think he’d invite me to his house as if nothing happened? And that he was only pretending to be shocked when you started talking? For god’s sake, do you think that John, knowing that you and Jim are siblings, would let you get into his home?”

“Sherl…”

“We’ll talk at your place” he snapped and looked at the taxi driver; however the man couldn’t yet realize what they were talking about, they shouldn’t continue their conversation, taking Janine’s big mouth into account.

“All right” she answered and fell silent, to speak again few minutes later. “Do you think Jim will get mad…?”

“He’s visiting me tomorrow. I’ll talk to him and take part of the blame since I could have warned you somehow when I realized you were there” he said and bit his lip to stop himself from smirking. “But to do so, I have to know where I stand so that... you will have to tell me lots of things.”

***

Janine’s flat didn’t really change. There was less stuff, no souvenirs or photos and nothing personal; the furniture though stayed at its place and the kitchen was fully equipped. However it was clear that the apartment was rarely used it didn’t seem abandoned. Sherlock sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Janine to make him a tea and when she was taking the milk from the fridge, he peeked inside and realized that most of the groceries in her house in Sussex must have been ordered by Jim – in this place she had _nothing_ healthy. She didn’t change her diet and wasn’t try to lose weight as he had thought before; actually it seemed she gained some.

“Jim never comes here” he commented and Janine immediately froze.

“How do you know?”

“He eats healthier. The first thing I checked when I broke into your house was the fridge and the cupboards.”

“You’re right” she admitted. “He never comes here. We haven’t met since he left my house after your _unannounced visit_ even though we’ve both been staying in London after that.”

“You met in Scotland” Sherlock stated calmly which shocked Janine so much that she dropped a tea tin and half of its content scattered on the floor. She swore quietly and started cleaning the mess, glancing at Sherlock with irritation.

“Continue.”

“I’d rather you speak. You visited your parents, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know how much I can tell you.”

“Have you already forgotten what you did at John and Mary’s place? I need information about you and Jim to…”

“Firstly, tell me what do _you_ know” she interrupted him, putting the scattered tea to the trash bin.

“I know your parents’ names, I know you lived in Ireland once and moved to Brighton when you were children and few years later he came back to his mother’s family living in a small city near Dublin while you stayed in Sussex. Shortly after you went to college, your parents moved to Scotland. That’s just the boring facts but you surely realize that if I found out about it I know some more interesting things too” he stated and waited for a reaction for a minute but got none. “I want to hear your part of the story. And, more specifically, I want to hear about Jim you knew before he became Moriarty.”

“Does Jim know what you’ve already learnt?”

“Partly. But tomorrow I’m going to tell him more” he answered calmly. “So… Jamie Dawson. What can you tell me about him, Janine?”

“Why… I…” she started and sighed, taking a kettle; her hand was shaking, when she was pouring their teas. “Sorry, I can’t do that. I can’t tell you the secrets my brother has been hiding from the world his whole life.”

“Oh really? An hour ago you almost revealed to John and Mary that your brother is a famous criminal whom I’m dating.”

“That was…”

“ _A mistake_ , yes, of course. But if you’re in touch and he confides in you about our relationship – and he does, you’ve admitted it yourself – you surely know how much influence I have on him. One word from me and he believes you did it on purpose. You tried to argue about it but deep in your heart you know that I’m more precious to him than you are.”

“What do you know about Jamie?” she asked with resignation, realizing she lost that battle and there was no point in fighting anymore. Nevertheless, Sherlock decided he didn’t want to make Janine speak because of emotional blackmail.

“There’s one thing you need to know. You don’t betray him and whatever you’ll tell me about him I won’t _ever_ use it against him. I know how little my promises may mean to you but this time you need to believe me that… I need this information… for his own good. You surely realize he’s in trouble and you know who he really is and I… I need to get to him to… _fix him_ ” he said uncertainly which, along with his honesty, made the suspicion in Janine’s eyes disappear and it seemed that the woman finally started trusting him. “I suppose that Jim started using the name _Dawson_ as a student and I know for sure he was using it when he was a lecturer in Sussex and worked with your father. He got rid of _James Hawkins_ in Ireland about twenty years ago and _Jamie Dawson_ is the name he had been using most of his adulthood before showing up as _Moriarty._ ”

“You’re right. Of course. You’re _always_ right” she said after a moment and pouted. “Jamie Dawson… Jamie…” she fell silent again and took a deep breath. “I was sixteen or seventeen when Jim disappeared. He stopped calling and visiting us and even though we knew he had moved from Ireland to London some time ago, we didn’t know much more about his doings so we couldn’t get in touch with him. He just vanished and we didn’t hear from him for two years. I was already in college when he suddenly showed up on our doorstep like nothing happened being…”

“Being what?” he asked when the woman paused, clearly not knowing what to say.

“Sherlock, how much do you know about what happened in Brighton…?”

“I talked to your neighbors. I know that sometimes he made people aggressive and a lot of them wanted to hurt him and at the same time - feared him. Excellent student who didn’t mess with adults who saw him as a quiet, non-threatening and invisible child, even though he sometimes made them… anxious.”

“Well then… you know more than I thought, so…” she paused. “If you know that much you won’t be surprised that when he, that _quiet yet somehow disturbing kiddo_ , came back after two years absence with a broad smile and lots of bad showbiz jokes, being so cheerful and a bit crazy, our parents first thought was that he was drugged. They had never seen him like that before. I doubt they ever saw him _laughing_ when he was younger.”

“Your parents didn’t but _you_ did.”

“How… No, I’m _not_ asking what have given me away” she laughed but quickly got serious again. “You’re right. When there were only two of us, he was just like that evening. Ok, maybe not that… noisy and extravert but with me he was always unreserved, funny and somehow _warm_ and… well. Talking about our elder brothers he was as different from Mycroft as a man could be.” They both chuckled at her comparison. “I guess your and Mike’s only shared entertainments were chess and discussions about some boring theories, while me and Jim, when he was visiting us on holidays…” she smiled to her memories and fell silent for a few seconds. “We were riding to the forest by bikes to have pinecones fights, roll around in the mud and then jump into the river fully clothed. We were setting the trash cans in the suburbs on fire or breaking into the basements and attics to dig through the stuff in there and wondering who are the people it belong to. And sometimes we were just climbing the tree on our backyard and observing people down the street. Jim was deducing them for me, telling me who they were and whom they would become, what plans they had, where they were going right then and... he seemed to know it all just by looking at them. And then... we were going home and he...” she paused. “He was putting on a mask and suddenly he was kind and quiet again. And somehow... completely deprived of his true personality.”

“Didn’t it confuse you?”

“It did but he lived so far away and visited us so rarely that I didn’t want to lose our time together questioning him” she said and looked at Sherlock unsure how much she can reveal.

“Yes, I know he had to live in Ireland while you were in Brighton and that he... didn’t want it to be like that but didn’t have much choice. We can leave it for I see you don’t want to talk about it and I already know enough. I’m not going to force you to...”

“...to anything and you’re doing it all for his sake” she repeated his previous words. “You want to learn something which make you understand him better. Reach him? Something like that...?” she asked and Sherlock nodded, a bit surprised that Janine seemed to accept it. “I’ll tell you more later and... well... the thing you need to know is that I believed in a lie for years since my parents didn’t want me to learn the truth but... it’s connected to Magnussen and... Ok. For now I’d better tell you more about our teenage years.” She took a deep breath and looked down at her hands. “So... his visits were the happiest time of my childhood... well, the time he still lived with us was wonderful as well but... you only realize how important someone who lives with you is when they have to leave you. And that’s why those few weeks with him every year were so precious to me. Nevertheless, the most memorable holiday was the one when Jim finished high school. He flied to Great Britain in the middle of July and stayed for two months. He was already independent and...”

“ Sorry for interrupting but… which month was he born?” Sherlock asked, a bit uneasy that Jim arrived to Janine and their parents after he had murdered his family in Ireland, as if nothing happened.

“March. 27th, to be exact.”

“And he became independent as soon as he came of age.”

“Well… yes, he did. He stated that he saved some money from a scholarship and besides his grandmother was wealthy enough to help him move to Dublin and finish his high school but…” suddenly she became nervous. “Back then I was too young to be really interested and our parents didn’t talk with him about it since they tried to ask _once_ , just after he had arrived and he… got completely mad. That was the first time we had seen him like that and…” Janine grimaced. “And it was horrifying.”

“Tell me more about it. Anything you remember.”

“When he…” she started uneasily. “When Jim arrived and the first thing he said was that he was moving out of Ireland to study in London, of course we were happy to have him so close again, away from his mother’s awful family… you know he is my half brother, right?”

“That’s obvious.”

“We were happy but… well. He was so young and his financial independence, even with the help of his grandmother, seemed odd. Why would she started helping him only after he came of age, not sooner? And when he arrived, just looking at his clothes, cosmetics and other expensive stuff you knew he had money. Lots of it. More than we ever had. My mother asked him half-jokingly if he had won the lottery and he got a bit nervous but she seemed not to notice it and she and our father started asking... wrong questions. And that was when Jim got mad and started... screaming at them and almost _threatening_ them... he shouted they shouldn’t ask about that money for their own good, that he was an adult now and that he could take care of himself and so on... he continued his rants for a few minutes and suddenly he got completely calm and said something like... I don’t remember the exact words... _I’ve been having a gold mine just under my nose for years and the only thing I needed to do to get it was killing some dragons which have been sitting on it_. You know? It sounded kind of funny, funny enough for me to start laughing and the tension between us all disappeared. Our parents didn’t try to question him ever again and the words were dying away on their lips every time Jim noticed they were staring at him a bit too intensely... since every time he caught their glances he was doing that thing... oh, you surely know what I mean... all the faces, all the masks that frighten people so much. But until then he had never used it against our parents.”

“It seems you remember the dates and the whole situation quite well” Sherlock pointed out and Janine raised her eyebrow, waiting for him to say something more. “It’s almost as if you’ve been thinking about it lately.”

“I won’t even ask. Yes, you’re right. I thought about it few weeks ago, when Jim rose from the dead, appeared on my doorstep and revealed who he really is but…”

“But we’ll get to that” he interrupted, wanting to hear the story from the beginning; Janine though seemed not to get it.

“My first thought was… well. If he admitted it all himself, it must be true. And if he’s really a murderer and a psycho, it’s rather obvious how he got the money when he was eighteen. You know, I asked him about it and this time he neither screamed nor denied” she said and fell silent for a moment. “Aren’t you going to ask what he answered?”

“It doesn’t matter since I know where the money came from.”

“He murdered five people. He didn’t tell me who but he admitted that killing them provided him... an easy enter into adulthood” she finished and closed her eyes. “He said it so... calmly. As if it was nothing special. And it probably wasn’t anything special to him if he just killed those people, covered it up and took the money... and then came to us and behave as if nothing happened and with me, when our parents weren’t around, he was just as sweet and funny as he had always been. Do you know what’s the scariest thing about it all? I _know_ that Jim is _James Moriarty_ , I got the proof, he admitted it himself point-blank but when I look at him, I just don’t _feel_ it...! My brother and that psycho criminal are two different persons to me and I don’t suppose I’ll ever... _merge them into one_. I have know idea which of his versions you fell in love with and which you fuck but since you’re so twisted I’ve got every reason to believe it’s _Moriarty_ and that the thing between you two is some damn fetish with the good detective and the bad criminal” she laughed hysterically. “I’m sorry, I really am, but I just had to say it all aloud since sometimes speaking makes even the scariest things slightly less scary...”

“Looking at you I see this time it hasn’t worked.”

“No, it hasn’t” she admitted.

“Janine, you... you’re afraid of him. And that’s why the mere thought about me telling him you’ve revealed his secrets scared you so much that you let me question you” he stated, staring at her pale face.

“You’re only partly right. He doesn’t scare me when he’s _Jim._ ”

“And now you only dared to talk to me since you know _Moriarty_ won’t get mad knowing that it was _me_ who forced you to do so.”

“You’re an exception to him. In every possible way. You’re the only thing that _both_ Jim and Moriarty talks about. You’re the one who joins them” she murmured and was silent for a while; when Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, she stood up and rushed towards the living room to come back with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She poured the alcohol, pushed one of the glasses towards Sherlock and then – emptied her own and filled it again.

“How often he switches his versions?” Sherlock asked the question he was going to ask few moments ago, a bit concerned that Janine started drinking so fast.

“He was becoming Moriarty every time I was getting too... pushy. And once when he wanted to get some information out of me.”

“What exactly?”

“When he ordered me to tell him everything about Magnussen and my relationship... with you” she said nervously and stared at her glass. “He... got me so frightened I couldn’t speak a word. He was pouring me wine until I got my tongue back and then he suddenly changed and became so kind and cheerful I couldn’t believe it was the same person. He was calling me _his little sister_. He was holding my hand and playing with my hair. He said that I was cute when I was scared but he’d like me better if I wasn’t only cute but _a good girl_ as well and that good girls are answering when their elder brothers ask them questions” she confessed with a shaking voice.

“And now you need an alcohol to make speaking easier for you think I’d do what Jim did to you if you weren’t _good enough_?”

“To some extent... yes, I do” she said, sipped the wine and looked down at her hand with a long, painted nails. “I know you, Sherlock. I know my brother too and Magnussen told me enough to know that Moriarty...”

“Tell me everything about Magnussen” Sherlock said and sighed, seeing Janine taking the glass so nervously that a bit of wine spilled on the table. He caught her wrist gently, put the glass back and took some tissues to wipe the table. “And don’t worry” he added quietly. “I may be twisted but I’m not your brother. I only want to know it all to... understand something. I’ve told you I won’t use anything you say against him but... If you say _no_ now, I won’t push you anymore.”

“I... I’d like to finish the part about Jamie Dawson” she said and Sherlock nodded, deciding that letting Janine speak what she wanted to might be the best idea, even if she was a bit chaotic. It seemed to be the only way to learn anything from her, since she emptied the glass again, clearly wanting to get drunk as soon as possible.

***


	22. Janine - 2

***

“When Jim came back after his long absence… well, that time when he arrived and acted so strangely, he started fooling around the same moment he showed up on our doorstep” Janine said. “He told us that he was still in college and had come back to England after two-years student exchange; that he had been travelling around Europe, doing businesses and making connections. That his _company_ , whatever it was, was prospering extremely well and that he had reached a point where he didn’t need to _look_ for clients since they were banging down the doors themselves.”

“When exactly did it take place?”

“2002” she answered. “Early autumn. My academic year didn’t start yet back then. May I continue?”

“Yes, of course…” Sherlock murmured, when it occurred to him _again_ how young Jim was when he already ruled his criminal empire and his cases were serious enough to hire contract killers like Mary in Europe.

“As I said, he was fooling around and behaved just… silly, I can’t think of a better word but suddenly his mood changed. He got more serious than ever and told us to forget that a guy called James Hawkins had ever existed. He stated he wanted us safe and… well, back then we didn’t really believe him but now I suppose he was honest when he said that he had erased his birth name from all databases and files and ordered us to destroy every single paper document we owned where his name was mentioned. His birth certificate, vaccination card, school report cards… he told us that if we had anything like that we need to get rid of it and move out of London since he had chosen it for his _command centre_ and it made the city the most dangerous place in the whole of Great Britain. Our father looked at him and said that he was calling an ambulance since drug overdose was the only possible explanation for this nonsense while Jim… he was only rolling his eyes, getting more and more amused and somehow… scary at the same time, since the persona he started becoming was surely _Moriarty_. The only thing he needed to say was something like _don’t even think about touching the phone, daddy, unless you want to get burned_ and all three of us froze. A few seconds past and he changed _again_ and started speaking in that… _giggling and obnoxious_ way. He said that we had two years to move out and the only reason he gave us so much time was the fact he wanted me to finish college. He said he’d organize us a new life anywhere we wanted except London. That he’d buy us a house, an apartment or even a palace, that he’d get us all jobs or maintain us if that was what we wanted. And finally, he said that from now on he was an IT guy called Jamie Dawson and that if anyone saw him with us we were supposed to say he was our distant relative from Scotland. We _do_ have a distant family in there but we’ve never been in touch with them, their family name isn’t Dawson and they’ve surely never known about it all.”

“And what were you supposed to say about _Jim Hawkins_?”

“That he had moved to the USA and except of occasional phone calls we hadn’t had much contact. Jim told us to cut ties with people who knew about his existence. _For the safety of all of us_ , he said.”

“Didn’t you suspect he was doing something illegal?”

“Of course we did but... when our parents moved to Scotland, when they did what he told them to do, he... changed again. He was still acting weirdly or a bit silly but he wasn’t scary anymore and he didn’t threaten any of us as long as we listened to him. I stayed in London – after long persuasion he let me do that but I had to promise him to tell anyone who asked that I was an only child, while our parents new friends and colleagues in Scotland were going to be told they only had a daughter. We knew that he was leading a double life but since he took care to provide us anything we needed... we stopped asking questions.” She fell silent, sighed and filled the glass to sip a bit of wine. “Every time we met on Christmas or holiday in our parent’s Scotland’s cottage, he came... in disguise. Sometimes he drove in a car with tinted windows, wore an expensive suit and had perfectly combed hair and sunglasses, sometimes he acted as travelling salesman, a guy from wire service or from cleaning service. Once he even dressed up as _Death_ , when he visited our parents on Halloween. I wish I had seen it” she laughed. “He started growing stubble even though till then he had always been clean shaven but... well, that one isn’t that odd since he was grown up man back then. He gave us all secured cell phones and forbidden to contact him using any other way. Our parents didn’t ask him about anything anymore but I tried to get something out of him sometimes since I couldn’t bare the fact he was hiding such a huge part of his life from me. Finally, he admitted he was working for secret organizations and that political aspects of his job... well, that it was better for me if I didn’t think about it and just forced myself to believe he was _really_ the shy IT guy who was a part-time lecturer in University of Sussex.”

“Did you?”

“I didn’t have much choice so I _did_ try. When I met someone I was telling them I’m a single child, I didn’t speak much about my family and when I mentioned him accidentally I was calling him _my distant cousin Jamie_ ” she said and sighed heavily. “Even though I stayed in London... you surely can imagine how angry he was that he couldn’t convince me to move out... I broke off all the ties with people who knew me when I was younger and were aware of the fact I had a brother. I lived my new life, fully aware of the fact he was lying to me and our parents and… I knew that whatever he was doing for living, it must have been... dangerous. And I knew that he was only protecting us, not telling us about it. I was pushing all the doubts and fears aside for years...”

“Until he got on the front pages of all the newspapers in Great Britain.”

“I’d rather erase all of this from my memories” she murmured and her voice cracked. “He called me a day before he... broke into all those places. And to our parents too. He told us that _a great game had started_ and that whatever he’d do we couldn’t interfere or even try to contact him. That nothing we’d see on TV would be real, that there’d be only _masks_ he needed to put on for the government, secret service and the organizations he worked for. That the man we’d all hear about on the news didn’t really exist, that it wouldn’t be him, that it would be _a role_ and nothing more. And then... boom!” she raised her voice and emptied the glass one more time; Sherlock didn’t try to stop her. “And then _Moriarty_ appeared, magically broke into all those places, stole the crown jewels, let the police catch him and for a week his doings were the only thing the newspapers wrote about.”

“How did he manage to hide the fact he was Moriarty from the staff of the university he worked for? I know your father worked with him occasionally.”

“Yes, he did. And he knew what was said in the scientific community. It turned out that Jim’s persona as Jamie Dawson in University of Sussex was prepared so perfectly that no-one in there suspected he and James Moriarty were the same person. Of course, other lecturers and students must have seen their resemblance but Jim somehow manage to stay in touch with his superiors when he was in custody. He was sending them articles which he was contracted to write via e-mail, talking on the phone with his co-workers and laughing when someone mentioned the famous criminal who resembled him so much; he pretended he knew nothing about it since he was apparently in southern France at his friend’s house where he was supposed to work on a scientific project. Every time he was asked about it, he was saying the same thing: he would come back in few months as planned, he spent most of the days writing and most of the evenings having fun with cute tourists. And every single person who talked to him... _his Jamie Dawson version..._ believed him.”

“Did you?”

“I have no idea what to think” she answered staring at her empty glass. “Of course I knew he didn’t stay in France, the one and only thing I was sure about. When the mess with James Moriarty vel. Richard Brook started, I was all mixed up. We didn’t know what Jim was doing after he was exonerated, he stopped calling, he rarely texted back and when he did he didn’t answer any questions about his whereabouts and doings. And then... all of this didn’t matter anymore since the day you faked your suicide and Richard Brook or Moriarty or _whoever he was_ disappeared, we were informed that Jamie Dawson died in a car accident. His body was mutilated and impossible to identify but his identity was confirmed after a DNA test since even though he had his passport and driving license with him, our parents couldn’t... didn’t want to believe it was him. Soon after the perpetrator was caught and sentenced to prison, the case was closed and only then... when I accidentally called Jim and the line was dead it hit me he _really_ died. And then… I forget that I ever thought ill of him, I forced myself to believe that he was framed, that he had nothing to do with that psycho criminal whose mask he put on and... and I realized that if I was going to fulfill his last wish I should start over and be happy and safe... since our happiness and safety were the only reason he had been hiding the truth from us. And the whole case with Magnussen is the final proof that’s what he always wanted.”

“Before we move on to Magnussen, please, tell me what do you know about that car accident? Who the culprit was? How the court went?”

“The only thing I know about the culprit is that it was a male. I didn’t go to the court and I’ve never talked with my parents about it since I didn’t want to look at my mother who was crying every time Jim was mentioned” she said, a bit exasperated. “I didn’t even try to get money from insurance since I didn’t want to talk to them. After Jim faked his death, my relationship with my parents worsened. They holed up in their Scottish cottage while I concentrated on making new friends and starting over _again_. We were blaming each other for Jim’s death and it took a lot of time for us to be able to speak again. I moved twice, changed my job and a few months after all of this I started working as Magnussen’s secretary.”

“What did you know about him before he hired you?”

“The only thing I knew was that I got an amazing job even though I wasn’t qualified enough. He paid well. He was... a good boss. Everything fell into place and I was alright... well, I was alright when I wasn’t alone with my thoughts about Jim. I met lots of people, including Mary and to be honest it was her who helped me, even though she didn’t know what was bothering me.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That my distant cousin died in a car accident. She noticed there was something more but she realized that I didn’t want to talk about it and she has never pushed me to confess. I felt that she had her own secrets and that was the reason she understood that others have their own too... but that’s only a stupid feeling and it doesn’t mean anything. She didn’t talk about her past, I didn’t talk about mine. That’s why we got along so well.”

“What happened next?” Sherlock asked, perfectly aware of the fact that at some point Magnussen must have started blackmailing Janine.

“Soon after you came back from the dead Magnussen started… he must have started having doubts about Jim’s death. If you faked yours, he might have done the same, that’s what Magnussen thought, I suppose. Maybe there were other reasons I know nothing about but… something made him show his hand. One evening he told me to stay in the office after my shift and he asked me straight up if I knew who my brother had really been.”

“You tried to lie to him and pretended you didn’t know what he meant.”

“I did and it wasn’t a good idea” she admitted, looking aside. “I don’t want to talk about it and I’m glad this man is dead. After long… persuasion, I confessed that I _did_ have a brother but he died in an accident and that he… was playing James Moriarty but I don’t know any details and never believed it was his true self. Nor that his true self was Richard-Brook-the-actor.”

“And Magnussen?”

“He started laughing in such an ugly way I won’t forget it till the day I die. And then” her voice quieted “he told me the truth. That my brother’s true self was _Moriarty_. That he had evidence. That they had been working together… he wasn’t specific about it though. I just couldn’t believe him since… the mere fact that the criminal Magnussen was talking about was Jim… just listening to him… was like betraying the memory of Jim. Magnussen got furious when he realised I knew nothing. He must have thought I’ve got some information and he spent months trying to get it out of me. He left me alone few weeks before Mary and John’s wedding and back then I thought he wouldn’t bother me anymore but… some time later he told me to visit him in his office _again_ and asked me if I knew how my brother had _really_ died. When I started talking about the car accident he was… amused. He was tormenting me for a week, hinting I was wrong and he enjoyed it… he was giving me hope that Jim was alive and then he… he send me a low quality video recorded from a building next to Barts. It started with Jim shooting himself in the head and falling and ended with you jumping off the rooftop.”

“If he had it recorded he should have known that I faked my…”

“I can show it to you. It was recorded from the other side of the building so that when you were jumping only your back was visible. For Magnussen it was proof you’re both dead and…”

“And that’s why he started having doubts when I came back. Janine why did you… knowing that I might have been the reason he committed suicide… why did you decide to get involved with me? You surely blamed me for it and… well, I guess you did…” he paused when the woman looked at him in peculiar way.

“Nothing could bring him back to life and I understood you were important for him” she stated after staring at his face for a few seconds. “I was watching this movie over and over again. I was crying but nonetheless I was entering _play_ again and when there was no tears to cry anymore I stopped looking and started _seeing_ and even though I’m not a genius like you both are, I can read my own brother’s body language. He had never behaved like that with anyone before… and even though he was playing, he had never played _like that_ for anyone, I assure you” she said and rolled her eyes, when she realised Sherlock didn’t know what she meant. “I needed to meet you. I needed to know who was the man that fascinated Jim so much he had chosen them to be a witness of his suicide. Besides, a day before the wedding Magnussen made me even more curious since he gave me case-related materials about your investigation into Moriarty and even though I was still shocked that criminal was my brother I couldn’t stop reading it and… that’s it. That’s why I came up to you as soon as we left the church and forced you to talk with me.”

“Did Magnussen know that you were going to hit on me?”

“I highly doubt it, he wasn’t interested in such trivia as crushes and one night stands. You quickly disillusioned me about the latter but I still liked you.” She smiled and touched Sherlock’s hand. “Me and Jim have similar tastes when it comes to guys. When we were younger we chose exactly the same type when we felt like having casual sex. He has never been in a relationship, I admit it, but mine were always… well. With… that kind of guys he’d like too.”

“What kind?”

“Weird, introvert, dark-haired individuals who tended to ward off most of people. None of my ex’s was as intelligent as you of course, but if I was looking for geniuses only I’d have to jump onto my own brother or Mike and both options are equally disgusting” she said wrinkling her nose in such a funny way that Sherlock laughed. “I was attracted to you and I thought that if we got closer you’d… tell me about Jim. And that actually happened since you weren’t really secret about your old cases. I liked you and at some point I realised that what was between you and Jim didn’t really matter anymore. And some time later I didn’t even think about him when I was with you, especially since Magnussen finally left me alone and stopped tormenting me with information about Jim’s past.”

“But he had been tormenting you before” he said, wanting to change the subject, which made Janine flinch. “He had been blackmailing you. Otherwise you would have quit. What did he want from you?”

“He wanted the one thing he didn’t really believe I could give him: information about Jim. And to answer your next question, he didn’t bother with anything special. He only told me that he would send the movie with Jim’s suicide to our parents and if it wasn’t enough for me to start talking, he would publish Moriarty’s real name and history in his newspaper and make my family’s life hell. He must have known how poor my mother’s mental condition was and that it would kill her. I was scared and he disgusted me but I couldn’t put my parents in danger. Especially since I was in no danger myself and working for Magnussen had its... benefits. The only thing I needed to get through was a few humiliating conversations with that monster and since he realized I didn’t know anything, his questionings were becoming less and less frequent.”

“Did he question you about anything besides Moriarty’s criminal activities?”

“Actually... he did, once. Last summer when... well, now I know it but back then I wasn’t aware of the fact that Jim became active again. Magnussen must have heard some rumours. I still don’t know why but he asked me about Jim’s mother’s family in Ireland but...” she laughed bitterly. “But it appeared that my parents weren’t honest with me and only recently I learnt what he witnessed as a child. Anyway... that and other things... Magnussen couldn’t force me to reveal our family secrets I knew nothing about.”

“Other things? What do you mean?”

“The reason Jim lived with us for a few years but was forced to move back to Ireland. I was a child when it happened and it’s obvious they told me… the milder version back then… but they’ve never decide to reveal the truth by themselves. After Magnussen started asking me about his childhood and teenage years, I visited them and forced them to tell me everything. I don’t know how much do you know but… I think that’s enough and I don’t really want to talk about it again. Still… somehow I suppose that Magnussen meant… something else since I felt that he didn’t really care about Jim’s childhood. He seemed to learn something and tried to get more from me. Maybe it was the people Jim killed when he was eighteen? But why would it matter? It happened years ago, Moriarty committed so many other crimes after that and I can’t imagine it could be important to Magnussen. Or maybe Jim did something more when he was in high school for I got the impression his teenage years was the time Magnussen was most interested in. One thing I’m certain of is that he knew Jim was born as Hawkins but I’m not sure he knew about his Jamie Dawson persona since he didn’t mention the name even once. Or maybe he just didn’t think it was important. Anyway… he was looking for something, I still don’t know what it was and I suppose my parents don’t either. Didn’t really matter since, as I said, Magnussen asked about it only once and never mentioned it again.”

“He was busy with me and my brother.”

“I know. Jim has told me what happened in Appledore. By the way…” she smirked “I suppose I should thank you for getting rid of him for good. He was the only reason Jim had to disappear and hide for so long.”

“Do you realise how he learnt about it?” Sherlock asked, trying not to think about the fact that someone like Janine had just thanked him for killing a man, even if said man was a monster.

“He admitted he had a spy in the secret service.” She shrugged, clearly not seeing it as anything important.

“It doesn’t matter anymore since that man was captured anyway but if my brother had learnt you didn’t reveal that kind of information he would have accused you of high treason and acting against national security.”

“Jim would have saved and besides I’m not even British.”

“Contrary to what you believe, he is neither invincible nor almighty” he said and the only reaction he got from Janine was looking aside. “Let’s get back to Barts rooftop. The fact Magnussen observed and recorded what happened in there explains a few things. Jim might have known he was being watched and that’s why he played the role like a pro actor. The blood, bone fragments, bullet, gun… it must have been a perfectly made forgery if I didn’t notice it was fake.”

“It might have been a real gun which was unloaded.”

“The gunshot would have harmed him even if there was no bullet. It was a forgery, no question. Anyway… when I learnt Jim was alive I thought that his show was made for Mycroft and me, whereas it was _Magnussen_ who was supposed to see him killing himself. Do you know why… why he had to do that and hide for three years? Did he tell you what exactly happened?”

“No, but I figured out that Magnussen offered him my safety for his death.”

“Yes, ultimately that was it but...” he frowned “You were his... _official_ pressure point which Magnussen was using to keep Jim in line. But at the end something else must have appeared, something which made Magnussen push him too far. Do you have any idea what it was? We both know that when he blackmailed someone he usually threatened to reveal their secrets, not demanded a suicide.”

“That was exactly what I thought when he told me about Jim but I couldn’t really ask him about it.”

“But you have your suspicions.”

“Yes, I’m think it might have been something that happened in Ireland, the thing he had once asked me about. He got... _something_ and even if it wasn’t much it was enough that the possibility of revealing it made Jim so scared that he...” she snorted “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”

“Jim himself stated that Magnussen had pushed him too far, don’t you really...”

“No, I don’t” she cut it. “The only thing I know for sure about Ireland is Jim’s childhood. I know who he was when we were alone, I know the mask he was showing to our parents but I don’t know who he was when he stayed with his mother’s family. He never talked about it, I never asked. Whatever the thing with Magnussen was, why would Jim tell me about it? When he came back he didn’t talk much about his early years. And things he _did_ tell me were surely only the ones he was sure I needed to know.”

“When did he come to you?” Sherlock asked, realizing he still didn’t know the exact date, even though he was sure it couldn’t have happened later than in early December. Besides... somehow he didn’t really want to know what they were talking about when they met after three years apart yet. Janine was too drunk for that and, well... he smiled internally. He preferred to talk about it with both of them, someday, when things would work out and they would sit on Baker Street, laughing and catching up on old times.

“The same day I visited you in the hospital. If you had paid more attention to the interviews I was giving, you would have noticed that.”

“He gave you more money than any newspaper could and that’s why you stopped...”

“No, you fool” she laughed and gave him a dreamy look. “That was the first thing he said when he came. I don’t remember the exact words but... you’ll get what I mean” she paused and changed her voice so that now she sounded threatening and amused at the same time... just like Moriarty did so often. “ _Sister dear, it’s about time you leave Sherlock alone. I promise you sincerely, one more interview and I’ll have to make you a head shorter. One more word against him and you’ll regret you have ever got close to him. Don’t you dare get close to him again, touch him or even look at him. He’s mine and mine alone and I’ll kill anyone who thinks otherwise!”_ She took a deep breath, her voice got normal again and her blank face expression suggested she didn’t realize _how much_ it affected Sherlock when she faked Moriarty’s way of speech. “You’re right, Sherlock, you’re far more important to him than I am. I knew it from the start but, well, it was worth to pretend I didn’t if the reward was your reaction from a moment ago. Shall I?” She pointed his barely touched glass and when the man nodded, she took it and started sipping the wine. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about it when I’m sober. I’m not going to pretend I can. Ask me anything you want. No matter what I say, he’ll forgive me if only you ask him to. He’d do anything you ask for.”

“Did he tell you so?”

“Didn’t need to. He’s my brother. I know him and I know when he’s in love. And I had no doubt when he took off the Moriarty mask and mentioned you as _Jim_ for the first time.” She moved her hand and looked sadly at the rippling surface of wine. “It took me less than a second to see it.”

“You’re drunk” Sherlock murmured and Janine giggled.

“I guess so. What a lame situation. My ex-boyfriend who has never let me take him to bed appeared to be gay and if that’s not enough he sleeps with my brother. My brother, who is a psycho criminal, whose mind is like a time bomb ready to explode since the remains of his sanity might fade away any time and then there’ll be nothing in him but madness and I can’t stop it, I can’t fix him...!” she clenched her fists and looked down. “Please, tell me you’ll try to help him no matter what...”

“That’s what I came for” he interrupted her, to stop her from further gibberish. “I wanted to learn about his past to...”

“Help him? You’re twisted as well. Not as much as him but still… It’s hard to believe…” she raised her head and looked at him with reddish eyes “that it’ll be you pulling him up, not him bringing you down. But I _want_ to believe it and I still have tiny flicker of hope. So... is there something more? Anything you want to know?”

“One last thing. Carl Powers. What do you know about him?”

“Oh...” she sighed, clearly surprised by his question. “He was a jerk. Lived nearby. Harassed Jim and although he wasn’t the only one, Jim had to go to the hospital because of him once. As far as I remember... pneumonia... and a few broken bones. And then Powers had an accident and died. Don’t remember much besides everybody crying... everybody but Jim but why would he cry over his bully? He didn’t show it but he surely was glad that asshole was dead and that he died in such a foolish way. You might think I’m a cold bitch that a few glasses of wine and I don’t care about someone’s death. It was Jim who made me like that. He had to. Otherwise I would have run screaming when he came back and told me the truth about himself.”

“I think you should go to sleep.”

“And I think I should finish that bottle in loneliness and you should leave and deduce what I... the whole night... I...” She took the glass once again. “Go away. I don’t like it when someone’s staring at me when I’m trying to get sloshed. Say hi to Jim and have fun, whatever that means to both of you. Come on!” she smirked and gestured towards the door. “Good night, Sherlock. I honestly wish you both all the best.”

“Are you sure…”

“Get. Out” she hissed and Sherlock only sighed, knowing that talking to Janine when she was in a state like that was pointless. When she drank, she usually seemed sober for quite a long time, then she got chatty and finally – lost control, got... maybe not aggressive but snippy and nasty for sure. He decided that the conversation was over for today since he didn’t have the strength to fight with his drunk friend; he slowly stood up and while Janine started drinking again, not paying any attention to him, he took a bottle of water from the fridge and an aspirin he found in the bathroom and put it all on the night stand in her bedroom. He quickly cleaned the floor so that Janine wouldn’t stumble when she went back to sleep, smoothened the bedding and, before leaving, turned on the night-light and opened the window for a minute, to freshen the air in the room.

When he stopped by the kitchen, Janine was staring at the glass and didn’t seem to notice him. For a moment he considered staying in her apartment but... well, she was a grown up woman and it surely wasn’t the first time she stayed alone with a bottle of an alcohol. He knew enough about coping with problems with substances and he knew that people like him and Janine should be left alone when they felt the need to get wasted – and that’s why a moment later he left the apartment and closed the door using a spare key he found in the foyer.

***

The conversation with Janine during which so many subject were raised, was so chaotic it took Sherlock some time to sort it in his mind palace. Some things surprised him – especially the fact that the woman seemed to understand his motives and that convincing her to confess to him was easier than he had thought it would be. Besides, even though he had known Janine and Jim were pressure points to each other, until now he didn’t concentrate on her and now he realized how much she cared about her brother – and that it didn’t change when she realized he was Moriarty. She understood his masks – at least partly – and at the same time turned a blind eye to his darker side, wanting to believe he was still the same person she knew when they were children.

The other thing he didn’t expect was Janine being quite aware of Jim’s personality disorders, or rather: he didn’t expect that the man wasn’t hiding the fact he had other faces from her when they were younger. Still, she _believed in James Hawkins_ , seeing that persona as a true one, while Moriarty and Dawson she considered twisted fakes, which she wanted to be erased by Sherlock. She believed that curing her brother meant killing all the additional personas and that Sherlock was the only one who was able to do that – and that’s why she confessed to him and told him everything she thought was important; she would surely have been less helpful if she had known that the detective wasn’t going to erase anything or cut off the broken parts of Jim psyche. She would never approve his trials to combine all the masks into one persona and the fact he was going to let Jim use them separately when they were needed. Of course, he preferred Jim to use them in... different proportions than now but... well. Unlike Janine, he met Jim as a genius criminal and at first he didn’t know he was once a troubled but good child who went down the wrong path. Now he knew what made Jim what he was and he saw him as a sum of his experience and all the twisted and totally different personas. Sherlock didn’t like them all. But all of them fascinated him and... and he was in love with them equally.

He was staring at the ceiling in Baker Street’s living room, letting his thoughts flow freely; he was drifting through them, the things he already knew and the blank spaces he didn’t really want to fill yet, preferring to create some theories first. What happened in Janine’s cottage in Sussex when Jim came back? How did his life in university and in Dublin’s high school look like? What kind of lecturer he was? What kind of relationship he had with Rose? What about his cousins? How did Jim start building his criminal empire, how did he force or convince people to work for him...? Sherlock knew that he might never find out it all but for the first time in his life the feeling that some secrets wouldn’t be revealed didn’t frustrate him but gave him a strange... satisfaction. _There were so many things to discover_ , so many years, incidents, people, decisions, plans...

He already knew a lot about Jim’s childhood – he knew what happened in Ireland and in Brighton, he knew what kind of student, son, brother and school colleague Jim was, he knew his fears and his first attempts to build a web and masks. Jim’s teenage years weren’t full of secrets as well even though he still had a lot to find out about his life in Dublin; for now he only had an image of a furious child whose beloved family was taken away from him, who had to live with people he hated and who made him plan a blood vengeance for six years. He was invincible  in Clane, he was a silent victim for his cousins while for his sister whom he was only seeing twice a year he was a crazy, fascinating genius she loved more than anyone else in the world; for his parents he was a silent and a bit weird child, for Rose – someone to talk to, a boy who let her feed him with her insanity.

And then... he made his cousins move to America – Sherlock was sure it was Jim’s doing – the day he murdered the other Pattons came and he was finally free, out of Clane and with money to start a new life. Of course, Sherlock had already known that Lorcan was a wealthy man but until lately he didn’t suppose that money was one of Jim’s motives when he decided to murder his family. That thing made the detective a bit uncomfortable... but he couldn’t condemn Jim for that.

Jim changed his name after moving to London but it took some time before he informed Hawkins about it. He might have decided to wait until his new persona was full, believable and perfectly combined into the real world before he showed it to his family; during his two-years absence he was probably building his empire in Europe, especially since that was the time he hired Mary and when he came back to England he already had connections, power and money. He got a degree in London’s university and started working as a lecturer in Sussex but... how he managed to find the time for all of this, visiting his family, working as a consulting criminal and ruling his empire – Sherlock couldn’t imagine. He wasn’t sure what exactly was happening between the moment _Jim_ came back to England and that when _Moriarty_ caught his attention but it seemed clear that the mask of the criminal was slowly suppressing the others since working as one was becoming more and more absorbing. He got a few lives to live, lots of people he had to stay in touch with, all the spies, lookouts, workers, hit men, clients... all the things that should have been just as interesting as absorbing they were but...

But for some reason it wasn’t enough for Jim, who somehow spotted him and decided to trap him, observe him in Barts and create the riddles for him. When they met at the swimming pool – well, actually every time they met – Jim was stating he was bored with his life and that Sherlock was the only thing that could keep him entertained. Back then it sounded like a psycho’s rants but now... Sherlock closed his eyes, reminding Janine’s face when she told him that she had noticed Jim was in love in one second and that it was the first time she had seen him like that.

It was hard to believe that their story could have started with an emotion which was so... ordinary, which was something most of people felt, something even the most stupid and the least valued of them experienced. Jim was a genius who could do and get anything he wanted but in the end he was able to spend all the money and time for his close ones – Rose, his parents and Janine. And... for Sherlock too, since all their games were expensive, time-consuming and complicated. He even got himself tortured by Mycroft, just to get closer to him. And the last events, when he was risking everything, exposing himself, revealing his feelings and secrets from the pasts – after all he told him about Janine of his own free will... and, finally, he agreed to give Mycroft what he wanted and sacrifice a part of his criminal web he had been working so hard to rebuild. Sherlock still remembered his brother’s face when he heard the name KAPPA and no, it couldn’t have been a small, unimportant project, it was something huge but Jim was ready to give it away anyway, without being guaranteed that the elder Holmes would give anything in return instead of putting him into prison. Mycroft knew it and it made him trust Jim even less, since he expected a trick, while Sherlock knew there was none. Nevertheless, if his brother believed there _was_ , Jim was in danger, more than ever before – posed by the government and people connected to project KAPPA, whatever it was, as well.

He spend the whole evening thinking about it all on the couch, listening to the songs Jim had given him and ignoring the sound of incoming messages. He counted twenty four and when twenty-fifth came around two o’clock a.m., he slowly stood up and took the phone, deciding to check the sender's but not reading the texts; he changed his mind though when he saw that two of them came from Janine since he was curious what the woman, who was probably totally drunk now, could have written. He was quite surprised when the massages appeared to look normal – it seemed that the woman stopped drinking when he left after all and managed to get better.

_Sorry I got all emotional but I’ve never really talked to anyone about Jim and now I know how much I needed it... I sent you the movie I told you about. Thanks for taking care of my bedroom. Please, don’t tell Jim what I’ve told you._

_Or tell him everything if you think that’d be better._

He decided that the massage didn’t require an answer so he muted the phone and put it aside, not bothering to check the other texts, deciding to read and answer them all at the morning. He walked towards the desk to turn off the music and close the laptop and then, not caring about the fact it was the middle of the night, he took his violin and was playing the melodies he knew by heart until – around five o’clock – he felt tired enough to be sure he would fall asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.

He woke up few hours later and after lying comfortably on his back, he stared at the ceiling, analyzing everything he heard from Janine once again. He wasted most of the morning reading news and surfing the Internet and then – he wasted an hour listening to Mrs. Hudson reproaches, who was outraged by the way he left John’s house the day before and by the fact he hadn’t said a word he was dating someone. Sherlock’s only answer, when she started questioning him about his new relationship, were a few irritated snorts and when she asked him about _his sweetheart’s_ name he couldn’t refrain from a smirk. He leaned towards the elder woman and something in his eyes made her freeze.

“James Hawkins” he said, using the same accent Jim would use if he introduced himself with that name.

“Hawkins...! Of course, it’s Janine’s brother and...” she paused, when Sherlock frowned. “Janine’s brother… Why did you keep it a secret if…”

“Since it is _a secret_ ” he stated dryly.

“Sherlock...” she sighed “if it’s about you and John...”

“It’s not about John.”

“I suppose he wouldn’t agree.”

“And he would be wrong. It's not the first time, it won't be the last.”

“I know what was between you two and sometimes it’s... hard when we and our dear ones go our separate ways but...” she looked at him with a smile which was supposedly reassuring but somehow it seemed sad to Sherlock. “But it is what it is. He’s got Mary and I’ve warned you that the marriage changes everything. And now you’ve got someone too so maybe it’s about time you forget the past and try to rebuild your friendship...? The two of you…” she fell silent when Sherlock stood up and moved towards the window, where he braced himself against the windowsill and closed his eyes.

“There won’t be _the two of us_ ever again” he said. “We both made our decisions and, as you said, went our separate ways. I may visit him every few weeks and pretend I care about his family life, he may visit me on Baker Street and comment the mess and rearranged furniture and... that’s all. Yesterday I tried to _rebuild our friendship_ but it was a mistake.” He turned around and looked into Mrs. Hudson’s sad eyes. “If I tell him whom I’m dating he won’t want to have any relationship with me, if I don’t he’ll be angry I’m keeping it from him and he’ll think I don’t trust him. Me and John... it’s a lost cause.”

“You’re underestimating John” Mrs. Hudson said slowly. “He cares about you and you’re still his friend. Whatever happens you’ll be one of the most important persons in his life... even if you’re not important in the same way you once were.”

“I’ve never been important to him in a way you think I was” he said and looked aside. “And there are things he would never accept.”

“Have you forgotten what he accepted about Mary?”

“Oh, I assure you there are people whose past is worse than Mary’s and James is one of them. And the main difference between them is the fact John loves Mary and he...” Sherlock paused, almost saying _he hates James_. “But he doesn’t love James” he finished lamely.

“James Hawkins...” the woman repeated and paused for a moment. “He’s someone John knows but he had no idea it’s him, am I right?”

“I couldn’t put it any simpler than that” he said and groaned in frustration. “Enough. Please, leave it. I’ve got a lot to think about, I’ve got a case and I have to...”

“Maybe if you asked John to help you with Moriarty’s case it would be easier to...” she started and Sherlock laughed bitterly.

“It wouldn’t, I assure you” he said and turned back again. Mrs. Hudson sighed emphatically but she understood the conversation was over. She said goodbye to Sherlock and when she didn’t get any reaction, she quietly left the apartment.

He stayed in the same place until he was sure his landlady wouldn’t come back and then he went back to the couch to read the messages he ignored last evening. Bill texted to inform him he was going to continue listening to the recordings and the next messages, he had been sending the whole night, contained the information which parts were interesting enough that Sherlock should check them himself. Mycroft asked if he was in touch with Moriarty, advised him against searching information concerning project KAPPA on his own and a few hours later – texted him again to inform him he got some news about Owen Patton but since he had an emergency call from Brussels, they would talk when he came back on Sunday. Irene sent her greetings from Helsinki and demanded some news about his romance, while Mary informed him that she managed to calm John down but the only message from his friend suggested otherwise.

_Call me, no matter what time it is._

John texted him around midnight but there was no unanswered calls from him which indicated his friend understood that Sherlock didn’t feel like talking yet and respected it. He appreciated it, really, but didn’t appreciated it _enough_ to call him even though he knew that postponing the conversation wasn’t the best idea. At first though, he should think of a lie to tell John and he had no idea what it could be.

He smoked a few cigarettes in a row, wandered around the apartment and finally started listening to the parts of the recordings Bill mentioned but he was too anxious to really focus on it. There was no point in doing anything which required a clear head and that’s why, an hour and a half after Mrs. Hudson left his apartment, he was already on his way out to Angelo’s restaurant.

The man greeted him with a broad smile, welcoming kind as he had always been, and started questioning him about his private life – but somehow his behavior was more adorable than annoying. Sherlock didn’t talk much, ate half of the dish which was served to him and then stared at the window, unmoving. He sat at the same table he and John had been sitting a few years ago, barely knowing each other and having one of the most embarrassing conversation about their relationships – or rather lack of them – and sexual orientation they ever had. The place where everything started, where they spent their first evening together and where they had been coming back many times.

“By the way, how’s John?” Angelo suddenly asked, sitting next to Sherlock; lunch time was over, the restaurant emptied, so the man could take a short break. “He hasn’t been here for so long I’ve almost forgotten how he looks like.”

“Got married, has a child.”

“A child!” the man shouted, clearly surprised. “So that blonde... well, I didn’t know it was serious.”

“You know her?” Sherlock asked and his friend laughed a bit nervously.

“Oh, they... came here once, before you came back to England. Came unannounced, left quickly. It seemed he didn’t feel... right. You were gone and you visited me so many times together... I wasn’t really surprised the place got him down.”

“Old days.”

“Yeah, right...” Angelo admitted and suddenly he smirked. “And what about you? Is there anyone you could invite here?” he asked and Sherlock snorted, irritated that suddenly the whole world seemed to know about Jim, as if his conversation with Janine magically made him look like someone who feel the need to talk about their romance problems.

“Sort of.”

“So what are you waiting for?!” the man shouted.

“I don’t know if he likes Italian cuisine” he said and Angelo looked at him as if he was crazy, just to laugh loudly a moment later.

“Tell me you’re coming beforehand and I’ll prepare such goodies he will love it.” He stood up and patted Sherlock’s shoulder. “Anything else I can get for you?”

“Large coffee” he only said and remembered Mrs. Hudson’s words about marriage... and everything said by the other people with whom he talked about John lately. Finally, he took his phone and, sipping the coffee Angelo prepared for him, he started typing SMS, choosing the words carefully. He wasn’t ready for a conversation but a text... he decided it would be enough for a start.

_His name is James Hawkins and he is an IT technician. We met after few years in Janine’s house on New Year’s. What else do you want to know?_

_Everything, starting from why you don’t want me to meet him and why yesterday you reacted like you did._

_I’ve got my reasons to believe you won’t like him._

_That’s the most stupid excuse you could think of._

_Any other answer wouldn’t be the true one._

_Mary states you’re anxious about it since you’ve never really dated anyone besides Janine._ Sherlock read after few minutes and he almost gritted his teeth that Mary suggested John something like that.

_If you think it sounds better than “you won’t like him”, let’s consider it the true reason._

_The truth is not something to be considered, Sherlock._

_My recent experience indicates otherwise but I won’t try to convince you. Only lies have detail. I’d rather not say anything else._

_If you were going to lie, you’re right, it’s better to stay silent. Do you want to come over soon? I’ll make sure Janine won’t disturb us._

_I’ll get back to you as soon as I can._

_It would be great if it took you less than two years this time._

_***_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter was a bit longer than usually and there were parts which I found quite difficult to translate. I did what I could to do it with the little time I had because of working over hours for past few weeks ;)   
> The next one is 23 pages and quite hard as well but since I suppose it will be more... satisfying than this one I hope I’ll be able to translate it faster ;)


End file.
